Thirteenth Night
by Temple Cloud
Summary: Malvolio can't face going on working for Olivia after everything that has happened. Sir Andrew doesn't want to stay in Illyria, either, and so the two men decide they might as well travel together. But when they meet a dying knight, life becomes really, really strange. Crossover with Arthurian legend, Greek mythology, and The Phantom of the Opera.
1. Chapter 1

_[Told by Malvolio]_

I couldn't sleep. With the curtains closed, my room was as dark as the dungeon where I'd been locked up, and I seemed to hear Feste earnestly asking me, 'So, are you _really_ mad, or just pretending to be mad?' and 'Sir Topaz' (who was also Feste, disguising his voice) telling me that I was hallucinating and the room wasn't dark at all, and that he couldn't pronounce me cured unless I would agree that people were reincarnated as woodcocks. Worse, I could hear _my_ voice, pleading with Feste to help me, grovelling to him. Worst of all was the memory of the lady Olivia's face, gazing at me in confused anxiety when I came in grinning like an idiot and prattling about the love-letter I thought she'd sent me – and Olivia again, even gentler and more pitying, when I was released from the dark room, still held in a straitjacket, dirty and degraded and furious, to confront her with the letter, and she explained that she didn't write it at all, and that someone must have tricked me.

I'd given notice, of course. It would be impossible to go on running the Countess Olivia's household, if everyone was laughing at me. When I'd informed my lady of this, she smiled and said, 'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that! Everyone here's been behaving rather strangely in the last few weeks, including me, and soon people will forget all about it. But I tell you what: why don't you take a sabbatical? You haven't taken any time off in – well, ever, actually, and you deserve it. Take a month's holiday, and think over what you're going to do next; and then, if you do decide to come back here, I'd be very glad to have you back; and if you still want to resign, I expect there are jobs going at Orsino's court, and he could pay you more than I do. But in the meantime, just relax.'

I agreed. I didn't _want_ a holiday. I wanted a lot of things, including revenge, a grovelling apology from the entire universe, Olivia's hand in marriage, and, right now, a bath and a shave and some clean clothes. But most of these weren't achievable right now, so, when I'd at least washed and shaved and changed into fresh clothes, I packed my bags and set off. It wasn't as though arguing was going to do any good, and perhaps Olivia still secretly thought that I had been temporarily insane and that, now I was getting better, I needed some time to convalesce. So, I booked into the _Elephant_ for the night.

And then, as I said, I couldn't sleep, in the darkness of the inn bedroom. It was ridiculous. I hadn't been afraid of the dark since I was six years old. I've always believed in sleeping well when I've done a good day's work, and being up bright and early the next morning to make sure everyone else gets up on time as well. (Not that getting any sleep was necessarily feasible with the Countess's uncle, blasted Sir Toby Belch, and his unspeakable friends, starting an impromptu party in the pantry when they reeled home at whatever time the pubs closed. But I believed in it as an ideal to aspire to, at any rate.)

But now, when I closed my eyes and tried to relax, I could hear Feste taunting me, 'Now, now, raving like this won't make you get better; just try to calm down and go to sleep,' and, before that, Olivia brushing cool fingers against my forehead to see if I'd got a fever, and asking kindly, 'Do you think you'd better go to bed?' – which I'd _completely_ misunderstood. On reflection, thinking I had any chance of ending up in bed with Olivia, who was not only my boss but also thirty years younger than me and absolutely gorgeous, really was insane, but it had seemed reasonable enough at the time.

Come to think of it, hearing voices in your head was a sign of madness. What if I really did go mad from delayed shock, now that I was no longer busy trying to prove that I was sane? Perhaps something perverse in me even _wanted_ to go mad, to prove that Feste and Sir Toby and Maria and the rest of that gang had done me a serious wrong and that it couldn't be dismissed as 'just a joke'.

Well, in the meantime, I might as well be comfortable. I made my way downstairs, and asked the night-porter how much a candle to last two hours would cost.

'Oh, they're free,' he said. 'Have a big one to last all night, if you'd rather – just as long as you don't let it set fire to the room! And if you're the scholarly type, there's books and newspapers in the bar. D'you fancy anything to eat or drink? The kitchen's closed now, but we've got some cakes and nuts and biscuits here, and a few bottles of beer...'

I ignored him, took a candle, helped myself to a book, and retired to my room. To my irritation, the book turned out to be a novel, but I didn't want to go down and speak to the infuriatingly chirpy porter again, so I sat up in bed and read. In fact, as fiction went, it wasn't too bad: a story about a lonely weaver who leaves his home town after his best friend has falsely accused him of theft and enticed his fiancée away from him, and settles on the edge of a village many miles away. I read until dawn, and then yawned, blew out the candle, stretched out in bed and wrapped the pillow round my head to blot out the frantically chattering sparrows, and slept until lunchtime.

It is horrifyingly easy to let standards slip, and become one of the wastrels who spend their nights carousing in drunken revelry and the next day recovering. Not that I was interested in the carousing side, but this was the first time I'd tried being nocturnal, and it was strangely pleasurable. I wondered whether I ought to be ashamed of myself, but, while I was on holiday, I couldn't think of any particular reason why I shouldn't be nocturnal for the time being. It wasn't as though I had any work I needed to get on with. While I was here, I was a customer, and it was someone else's job to wait on me.

I had lunch sent up to my room, along with the newspapers so that I could have a look through the job adverts. There wasn't likely to be much of interest, I knew. It's difficult applying for a new job when you're in your fifties, and, since Illyria was in the middle of a recession, there weren't many jobs going generally. I'd always been very good at interviewing people, and asking the questions they hoped no-one was going to ask, like, 'Why did you leave your last job – what precisely do you mean by "mutual agreement"?' 'Can you tell me about a time when you've had conflicts with your colleagues, and how you resolved the issue?' 'What would you say are your greatest weaknesses?' and 'Have you ever had, or been suspected of having, any of the following illnesses?' I knew all the evasive answers and what they meant, but I hadn't the faintest idea how I was going to answer any of those questions now.

The system had been a lot simpler when I was a boy. My uncle, who was butler to the old Count, had promised he could find me a job as a page-boy, as long as I stayed on at school until I was twelve, always got good grades and never got into trouble. I was a sensible child, and I'd always tried my hardest, and by the time I was ten I had become blackboard monitor, collector of dinner-money, and supervisor of the school library (only a couple of shelves of books in the corner of the room, but it was a responsible position, all the same). I knew that it didn't matter when other children kicked me and called me names in the playground, because they were only peasant children who'd be leaving in a couple of years anyway to earn a few pennies scaring crows or collecting firewood, while I was going to be page to a real Count. And in the meantime, if I was busy spending break-times cleaning the blackboard, counting dinner-money and checking that all the reading-books had been handed back on time, I didn't have to be in the playground much of the time anyway. The teacher said I ought to try for a scholarship to grammar school, but, with the prospect of a real job lined up, I decided I was ready to move on from formal education.

Of course, the old system of patronage and jobs for life was hopelessly inefficient, leading employers to hire the relatives of current members of staff rather than the best-qualified applicants. Not only that, it encouraged employees to be complacent, assuming that they couldn't be sacked whether they were any good at their jobs or not. Nobody should expect a job for life as a matter of course. But all the same, after working for the same household for forty years and working my way up to the top, I think I deserved one.

In fact, when the newspaper arrived I didn't even read as far as the job adverts, because I was too busy staring at the headline on the front page: 'Twin Weddings For Orphans Of The Storm'. I recognised nearly everyone in the photograph: Cesario, the effeminate new page-boy whom Duke Orsino had been sending to pester Olivia on a daily basis, holding hands with the Duke himself; and then Olivia, holding hands with another boy who looked very like Cesario, and must have been his brother. Thinking back, I'd seen the other boy before, too, the previous night in Olivia's house, hugging his brother and sobbing, but I hadn't paid them any attention at the time.

But – _weddings_? Olivia hadn't been wearing a wedding ring when I'd seen her, had she? Had she finally accepted Orsino? But everyone _knew_ she thought he was the most boring man in Illyria, though she'd always tried to be tactful, and made the excuse that, as she was merely a countess, she didn't think she was good enough to marry a duke. It hadn't been all that unreasonable to hope that she might marry down, rather than up; aristocrats _do_ sometimes marry their servants, and, if it came to that, Sir Toby had just got married to Maria, if only because they were united in hatred of me. Personally, I couldn't understand how anyone could want to marry Sir Toby, a man who exists in three states: (a) hungover and obnoxious, (b) drunk and obnoxious, or (c) asleep and almost tolerable; but that was Maria's problem, not mine.

But if Orsino wasn't Olivia's husband, who was? Not the ineffably vacuous Sir Andrew, surely? Or the boy Cesario, who had pushed past me, demanding to speak to 'the honourable lady of the house – which one is she, by the way?' The pretty, impertinent brat whom Olivia had made me run after to give him a ring, as if _I_ were the one who was a mere errand-boy? Was he even old enough to be legally married to anyone?

The story below the photograph demonstrated that I had only to be removed from my position for a few days for complete chaos to descend. 'Cesario' was, it turned out, a girl called Viola. She and her brother, Sebastian, were illegal immigrants: travellers from Messaline who had been shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria and had managed to swim ashore, though neither of them had known that the other had survived. After that – well, the whole thing was almost too bizarre to be shocking, if only because it was impossible to decide what to be scandalised about first. What kind of hussy disguises herself as a boy, and then brazenly asks for a job at the court of a man she's never even seen before? What kind of boy gets married on the spur of the moment to a woman whom he's never met, but who thinks she knows him and has obviously mistaken him for someone else? What kind of woman asks a boy still young enough to be mistaken for his sister to marry her – and isn't even disappointed when she discovers she's accidentally married a complete stranger, whose only achievement is to have beaten up her uncle and his friends? Admittedly, it was high time _someone_ taught Sir Toby and Sir Andrew a lesson, and I'm sure they deserved it, but Illyria has quite enough lawless vagabonds of its own without needing to import them – and, now that both Viola and Sebastian were married into the two noblest households in Illyria, there was no chance of sending them back.

The news was too depressing to go on with, so I finished reading the book about the weaver who adopted an orphaned child, and, when I'd finished it, went down to the bar to see whether they had _Paradise Lost_, which I've always meant to read and never quite got round to. They didn't, so I made do with another novel. This one turned out to be a sort of love story, although in practice most of it was about sheep. This was because it was about a young woman who inherits a farm, and decides to run it by herself, without the end of a bailiff, and, although both her shepherd and a neighbouring farmer are in love with her, the silly girl becomes infatuated with a fickle soldier. It was fairly obvious that she was going to end up marrying the shepherd, but it was interesting to see the plot winding its way through murder, ruined hay-harvests, elopement, faked suicides, sheep-bloat, illegitimacy, and over-enthusiastic sheepdogs. I hadn't realised just how many things could go wrong with sheep, but I could see how people became addicted to reading fiction if they didn't have anything better to do.

There was a folk singer in the bar that evening, who stayed until the small hours of the morning, so I decided to sit up in bed reading as the night before, since I wouldn't be able to get any sleep anyway. I didn't need to go down to see who it was; the voice was all too recognisable, and so were most of the songs, which had been in his repertoire for decades: _Come Away Death_, and _Bottle Of Wine_, and _O Mistress Mine_, and _The Merryman And The Maid_, and _The Armadillo_, and _The Wind And The Rain_, which is the most blatant lie imaginable. Feste isn't the kind of fool who ever gets turned out into the wind and the rain, unless he decides to go out there just for the fun of it.

There are genuine fools, who become court fool to a rich patron because they can't do any other job, who call their master 'Nuncle', and, if the master is ruined, will follow him into exile, like a beggar's dog. Feste is more like a cat: the sort of cat that positively refuses to catch mice, but goes from house to house, knowing that it can always find someone soft-hearted enough to give it a saucer of milk or a plate of fish-heads, and that it can come and go as it pleases, and scratch anyone who doesn't show it the respect it thinks it deserves. He also probably gets – I can't say he _earns_ – more money than I do, though it's impossible to prove this, because everyone gives him money and it doesn't show up on a wage-slip at the end of each month. The old Count, Olivia's father, told me that Feste was one of those anomalies you have to work round, and he laughed at me when I pointed out that my job was to rationalise matters and deal with anomalies.

Right now, the anomaly was explaining that, 'Some of you might have heard me at the lady Olivia's court, but she doesn't need a professional fool right now; she's got a husband to do the job for free. But still, they say one drink too many makes you a fool, the next makes you a madman, and the third drowns you. So, here's a song for any lunatics here!' and he launched into a new song, called _Mad Tom O'Bedlam_.

I didn't _think_ he was getting at me personally. I couldn't be sure whether he even knew I was there, though Feste generally seems to know practically everything that's going on. But if he _was_ trying to provoke me, and I stayed in my room, he'd think I was afraid of him, and if I got angry and stormed down to tell him to shut up, then he'd won. On the other hand, he _had_ rescued me when I was locked up, and I had promised to reward him. Not that he deserved it, of course, but I ought to keep my promises anyway. I made my way downstairs, with an envelope of banknotes, and handed it to Feste. 'There's the money I owe you,' I muttered, trying to sound as casual as possible. 'Oh – and – thank you.'

'That's okay – you'd suffered enough,' said Feste quietly. 'Now, why don't you buy me a drink? With all this singing, I'm as dry as the Egyptian mummy in the Metropolitan Museum.'

'What do you want?'

'Cider. Cheers, mate.'

I fetched a pint of cider for Feste and a mineral water for myself. 'By the way, do you do requests?' I asked.

'I might. Why?'

'Because I'd like to ask you to stop singing. Some of us are trying to sleep.'

'Okay, just one to finish off with and I'll call it a night. It's quite a quiet one anyway. Think of it as a lullaby.'

It was a quiet song, too: a melancholy Irish ballad called _The Youth Of The Heart_, with a haunting tune. I caught myself humming the chorus as I drifted off to sleep, and slept more peacefully and dreamlessly than I had for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

_[Malvolio's story continued]_

I woke up still thinking about the weaver in the story I'd been reading earlier. He was a Puritan, though he'd stopped having anything to do with religion, and stopped trusting either God or people, after being falsely accused of theft. I knew how he felt. I'd stopped going to chapel as a matter of principle, thirty years ago. This was because I'd had a series of arguments with whoever happened to be preaching, on various subjects including how the doctrine of Predestination differed from Muslim belief in Fate, whether Christians should celebrate Christmas, whether women should be allowed to preach, whether music had any place in Christian worship, and whether it was hypocritical to campaign against bear-baiting and dog-fighting but still eat meat. (I can't remember now which side I was on in some of these arguments: only that I'd felt very strongly about them at the time.) In the end, the pastor had said that if I wasn't willing to let people finish preaching a sermon before I started criticising it, I'd better not attend chapel at all for a few weeks. I'd told him he was a crypto-Papist who would evidently prefer to preach in Latin so that nobody understood what he was saying and could tell him he was wrong, and walked out, never to return. Since then, I'd been too busy to bother with religion, though people still referred to me as 'a sort of Puritan'.

But when I looked back, it wasn't the endless arguments about predestination and Christmas carols and animal rights that were important. What had mattered had been all those sermons about why you must love your enemies and forgive those who persecute you, just as God has forgiven you. At the time, I'd sat through all this talk about grace abounding to the chief of sinners, and wondered why the New Testament didn't have much to say to those of us who were respectable law-abiding citizens, didn't need forgiveness, and therefore shouldn't need to forgive anyone else.

But now, last night, Feste and I seemed to made peace, at least for the time being, and it was oddly reassuring not to have to resent him any more. It's all very well to storm off, snarling, 'I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you!' but in practice, if you have the capacity to antagonise virtually everyone you meet, then getting your own back on everyone who has ever bullied or insulted you can turn into a full-time job – especially as, if you don't have the resources to kill all your enemies outright, they are likely to want revenge on you for taking revenge on them for taking revenge on you. I wish I'd worked all this out a bit earlier. But on the other hand, being expected to forgive all my enemies (even Sir Toby? Even Maria?) didn't seem much more feasible.

When I went down to order breakfast, yet another familiar enemy was sitting slumped in one of the armchairs in the bar, with a suitcase at his feet. Sir Andrew was looking even paler and more wrung-out than he usually does; his head was bandaged, his right arm in a sling, and he had an only slightly faded black eye.

'What's wrong? Didn't the new Count want you staying in his house any longer?' I asked.

'I didn't want to stay any longer! I decided to leave as soon as I was well enough to get out of bed. I'm fed up with Illyria, everyone here is completely mad and I haven't got any friends and I just want to go home!' He was crying uncontrollably by this point, like a child. 'Even Toby isn't my friend, and I thought he was – I mean, he was always borrowing money off me and never paying it back, and you don't take money off someone who _isn't_ your friend, do you?'

'_I_ wouldn't borrow money without paying it back,' I pointed out.

'No, but then you haven't got any friends, have you? I mean, you haven't even got anyone who _pretends_ to like you! But you _still_ thought you were going to marry Olivia and get to boss us all around, didn't you? _Loser!_'

'You let Sir Toby convince you that _you_ stood a chance with her,' I pointed out. Doesn't that make us both equally losers?'

'Yeah – I suppose I should've thought of that,' Sir Andrew admitted. 'Only Toby said she was pretending to flirt with that kid Cesario just to make me jealous, and that I had to challenge him to a duel to win back her favour. Only it wasn't Cesario – did you hear, Cesario's actually a girl called Viola? – but anyway, it wasn't her, it was her brother, and he's _dangerous_, and he _attacked_ Toby and me! He slashed my head open, and I had to have eleven stitches, but I didn't scream at all!' he added proudly.

'_You_ had eleven stitches without screaming?'

'Well, you see, I fainted as soon as the doctor came near me with a needle, so it saved time. But the difficult bit was _finding_ a doctor, because the first one they sent for was drunk. It's not fair – if people like Toby and me are going to get pissed and start fights, other people ought to stay sober in order to patch us up!'

'And what do you expect me to do about it?' I retorted. 'Draw up binge-drinking rotas so that different people get completely out of their skulls on different nights?'

'Can I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday?'

'Certainly not,' I said sternly. 'That's much too often, and anyway, it isn't fair if the same people have the same day of the week every week. No, I think an eight-day rota would be fairer, don't you?'

Sir Andrew stared at me for a moment, trying to work out whether I was serious, and then we both burst out laughing. It was like the sort of ridiculous conversation you have with a small child – which, considering that Sir Andrew seemed to have the emotional maturity of the average six-year-old, was probably fair enough. 'I didn't know you _had_ a sense of humour!' he gasped at last.

'I didn't know I did, either. I think you may have awakened it.'

'Yeah, but why are you being – well, almost nice to me?'

This was a good question, under the circumstances. I could think of various sarcastic replies, but in the end I settled for, 'Well, now that we're both defeated, there isn't much point going on being enemies, so we might as well help each other.'

'We should gang up on Toby for a change – see how _he_ likes it!' suggested Sir Andrew.

'We could,' I agreed. 'But do you really think it's worth it? Anyway, I got the impression most of it was Maria's idea, and if she's married to Sir Toby, I suppose that's enough punishment in itself.'

'"But she'll regret it! The whole thing's doomed before they even take their vows!" That was a line from a play I saw once.'

'And if it comes to that, Sir Toby isn't going to have an easy life being married to anyone as sharp-tongued as Maria,' I continued. 'Perhaps they're each other's punishment.'

'Yes, they're each other's punishment. And they don't want me around any more, anyway. I'm going to send for the rest of my luggage and stay here until I'm well enough to travel, and then I'll go – oh, somewhere or other. Maybe Italy.'

'Do you speak Italian?'

'No, that's pretty much why I came here. You see, after I'd failed my university entrance exams for the fourth time, my uncle said I ought to go on a gap year until I'd got a bit more sense, and he'd pay me an allowance as long as I didn't come home. So I decided to start with Illyria because nearly everyone here speaks English, and I don't speak much of anything else.'

'Some people would have bought a phrasebook,' I suggested.

'I did! It said how to say, "I want a beer," and, "I want a steak," and, "I challenge you to a duel," in a dozen languages, but it didn't say how to say, "On second thoughts, I don't want to have a fight with you after all because you're a lot bigger than me, so please can I buy you a drink?" But anyway, I've seen lots of plays set in Italy, and the characters in the plays can all speak English.'

'Yes, but that's not the same as real life,' I pointed out.

'It might be! How do you know we're not characters in a play? I met this philosopher once who said that the whole world is a stage, only the author keeps running short of ideas, so he re-uses the same plots over and over, like twins and shipwrecks and girls disguised as boys. I mean, I saw a play once set in Ephesus, or maybe Syracuse, that was _exactly_ like what's been happening here, only it was about two sets of identical twins who'd been separated at birth, so one of each twin had grown up in Ephesus and the others had grown up in Syracuse. I think Ephesus is in Greece...'

'No, actually it's in Asia Minor,' I corrected him.

'Right, so Syracuse must be the one that's in Italy. Or somewhere foreign like that, anyway. I mean, I can't remember much about the play, I just remember one of them saying at the end, "We came into the world like brother and brother; Now let's go hand in hand, not one before the other." But I'd like to go to Syracuse or Ephesus or wherever it was, and find out if it's really like that.'

'I think it'd be a good idea to find out where it is first,' I said gently. 'There's an atlas on the shelf over there, and an encyclopaedia. Why don't you look it up?'

He yawned. 'Later. I'm really tired now, and I'm hurting all over. I just want to go and lie down for a bit.'

'Understood. Do you want a hand with your suitcase?'

'Thanks, if you don't mind.' Sir Andrew didn't say anything else until he'd found his room and clambered into bed, at which he glanced up and asked sleepily, 'Malvolio, what are _you_ planning to do next?'

'I haven't decided yet,' I admitted. 'I just don't want to go back.'

'Well – do you want to come with me? I mean, I know we hate each other, but it's no fun travelling alone.'

'I'll think about it,' I said. 'And I don't hate you any more. I don't _like_ you, you understand, but I might be able to put up with you.'

'Okay. I can put up with you, too.' He fell asleep, and began snoring, with a high-pitched nasal whine.

I returned to my own room, wondering why I had agreed even to consider travelling around the world with a monolingual drifter. It was hard to explain, except that I didn't want to be proudly aloof and alone any more, now that I'd found out what being utterly alone feels like. It had something to do with the brothers in the play Sir Andrew had quoted, and something to do with the reclusive weaver in the story I'd been reading, wanting to adopt the baby who'd crawled into his cottage out of the snow, because 'It's a lone thing, and I'm a lone thing.' Admittedly, adopting a whiny, petulant twit on a permanent gap year was going to be a lot more complicated than adopting a golden-haired orphan child, but, after all, somebody needed to keep an eye on him. At any rate, before we left Illyria, I was definitely going to buy my own copy of _Silas Marner_.

It might help me to stay sane.


	3. Chapter 3

[still told by Malvolio]

The night before Sir Andrew and I were due to sail, something distinctly peculiar happened – almost as peculiar as our having struck up a kind of friendship in the first place, for want of anyone else to talk to. I had offered to pay our bills at the _Elephant_ until Sir Andrew's next month's allowance arrived, if he promised not to eat or drink anything expensive. This was a matter of convenience, as I had a month's wages from the Countess Olivia in lieu of notice, plus some savings, while Sir Andrew was heavily in debt.

Now, the money from Sir Andrew's uncle had arrived at the Countess's house, and the new Count, Sebastian, had brought it round to the _Elephant_ in person, so that he could apologise to Sir Andrew for having fought with him when they'd first met, and ask him if he was feeling better now, and hope we had a good voyage, etc, and Sir Andrew could reply that no, he didn't bear any grudges, actually he thought his new scar made him look rather tough, and yes, he was fine, or at least didn't feel any more confused than he generally did, well, he was an Englishman, if there was anything wrong with his brain it was down to all that British beef, ha ha, etc. And they shook hands and parted as friends, and, that evening after dinner, I went up to Sir Andrew's room to help him pack his bags.

Sir Andrew went in ahead of me, and I heard him exclaim, 'Toby, old chap, what are you doing here? I thought you were married to Maria!' and then 'Oh gosh, I'm frightfully sorry, I mistook you for a friend of mine.'

A deep, rich, wine-dark voice replied, 'What makes you think I'd want to be friends with a wisp of straw like you? You've got a face the colour of cottage-cheese and an expression like a kicked spaniel, you know that?'

'Yes, everyone says that,' replied Sir Andrew meekly.

'And you can't even take an insult properly!' exploded the voice. 'If I'd insulted the Prince like that, he'd have insulted me straight back, and we'd have gone on being friends. You're not much of a hallucination, I must say. I thought I'd got a better imagination than to invent something that looks like you!'

I knocked on the door. 'Oh, come on in, hallucination,' the voice said. 'Only you'd better not be the Fairy Queen again.'

Now, I'm not in the habit of staying in inns, but the _Elephant_ is a fairly respectable establishment. Sir Andrew's bedroom was rather larger and better furnished than mine, but all the rooms were clean and well-aired, and, even with the shutters closed, you could always hear and smell the sea. By contrast, the room we had stepped into now was gloomy, greasy and flea-ridden, and it stank. There was an old man lying in a bed in one corner, next to a table with a half-empty bottle of sherry and two large glasses. There were a dozen or so empty wine-bottles on the floor.

The man did look rather like Sir Toby, only more so. He looked like a tapestry I had once seen of some satyrs, with an old satyr called Papa Silenus in the middle. He looked the way you imagine Father Christmas would after consuming one glass of sherry and once mince pie from every child in the world.

(Not that Father Christmas ever came to our family when I was a boy. My parents explained that they didn't want to bring me up to believe a lie, and that if people weren't prepared to keep Christmas properly with prayers and Bible readings, it was better not to celebrate it at all. Which I could see was reasonable, but it was still frustrating being the only child in the village who never got any Christmas presents, when children from much poorer cottages were showing off mittens that their mothers had knitted for them or wooden soldiers that their fathers had carved for them, or, at the very least, an apple and a piece of coal. Even if the apple was soon eaten and the coal had to go straight back in the fireplace, it meant they could jeer, 'What's wrong, Malvolio – Father Christmas hasn't missed you out _again_, has he? Haven't you learnt to be a good boy yet?' And I'd snap, 'I didn't _want_ Father Christmas to bring me any presents – only _babies_ want new toys for Christmas – but I asked him to bring _your_ mum and dad a fresh stick to whip you with – your dad's belt must be nearly worn out by now!' and stride off home before they could see whether I was crying. But I digress.)

I was surprised that the landlord had allowed someone like that to stay there, and even more surprised that we hadn't heard him, as he was evidently the loud, talkative kind of drunk who would probably burst into song at the slightest excuse, usually in the small hours of the morning.

'I don't know how we've walked into the wrong room,' I began, 'but we're certainly not hallucinations. We're not the product of your drinking…'

'Oh, it's not the drinking,' the old man said. 'I'm dying, that's all. My author's decided to kill me off, and now he doesn't know where to send me. You see, he knows there's no logical reason why I should go to Heaven, when I've never done anything good and never been sorry for all the bad things I've done, but on the other hand he doesn't want to send me to Hell, because he loves me, and he knows the audience does, too. So he's sending me visions, and one minute it's green fields and fluffy lambkins, and the next it's hell-fire and damned souls looking like burnt raisins on the top of a cake, and then it's you two: one who looks like a black crow and one who looks like a wrung-out dishcloth. Sorry, I'm not at my best and I can't even come up with decent insults any more, so I'm just stating the facts. What d'you call yourselves, anyway?'

'My name's Sir Andrew Aguecheek, but that's just because of the way I look, you know – I'm not actually diseased.'

'My name's Malvolio, but I'm trying not to deserve it these days,' I said. In the past, I had always been rather proud of my name, because, after all, it was _my_ name, and it did have a certain Italianate elegance about it. But in the last couple of weeks, I had begun to wonder whether it was actually fair. It wasn't as though I was noticeably more malevolent than, say, Sir Toby, who seemed to live as much for vindictive practical jokes on his friends and enemies alike as he did for drink and song.

'Then why don't you change it?' demanded the old man, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

'_Change_ it?'

'Well, you have to change your identity sometimes, don't you? When you've got the world coming after you – police, girlfriends' husbands, loan sharks, bookies, people with bills from wine merchants and pox-doctors, army officers wanting to know why you haven't reported for duty – all barging into where you're staying and saying, "Is there a John Oldcastle living here?" and your friends say, "Oldcastle? Never heard of him, sorry, you must have got the wrong address," and they go away. Besides, they all know Oldcastle died heroically as a martyr, and I'm dying in bed alone, so it can't be me, can it? Not that I've got any objection to dying in bed,' he added, 'but it's a pity about the "alone" part. There used to be a tart here – nice girl, and even when I couldn't make anything happen, if it wound up just being a cuddle, I promised to pay her just the same. And she knew I usually couldn't afford to pay anyway, but they'd just put it on my bill, and I'd pay the lot if I got round to having any money.'

'You mean the _Elephant_ is a brothel?' I exclaimed, horrified. 'This is supposed to be the best inn in Illyria!'

'No, no, not the _Elephant_ in Illyria. And the place I'm talking about is shutting down that side of the business anyway, just because one of my followers has got married to the landlady and he's too proud to run a brothel. They don't even want to run it as an inn any more, just a pub and restaurant. Hah! He wasn't too respectable to be a customer here in the old days, when the Prince was with us. But now that he's become king, he thinks he's got to be respectable and An Ideal King, and now everyone else seems to have the same idea.'

'What does that mean: "An Ideal King"?' asked Sir Andrew.

'One who starts wars with other countries instead of having civil wars against people who used to be his allies when he was busy deposing the last king. The wars are exactly the same, but you have to travel further for them and the food tastes funny and the enemy are Frogs or rag-heads, so, as far as the history books are concerned, that means you were A Good Thing, even if you had to banish all your old friends before you could start being it.'

'So this king banished you?' I asked, feeling that the king had the right idea.

'That's right, sent for armed guards to march me and the other lads off to prison, and gave orders that we weren't to be released unless we left his court forever – but I didn't think he _meant_ it! I mean, we were mates, so we were always fooling around like that – we'd decide to do a highway robbery, but then the Prince would fail to show up, and then, when the rest of us were divvying up the cash, a mysterious cloaked figure would come out of the darkness and rob _us_ – and of course it turned out to be the Prince all along! He used to be fun, until suddenly he decided to be all grown-up and serious and responsible.'

'There's a difference between someone laughing _with_ you and laughing _at_ you,' I pointed out.

'Well, maybe there is,' put in Sir Andrew, 'but it's still better than people _not_ laughing and not wanting to be your friend any more, isn't it? We're sort of banished too,' he added kindly to the stranger, 'well, we've banished ourselves, really. You see, my friend Toby – the one who looks like you…'

'You mean old, fat, and drunk?' suggested the stranger.

'Uh, well, yes, actually, but anyway, his niece is the Countess of Illyria – this lovely girl called Olivia – and he invited to come and stay so that she'd fall in love with me and we could get married, to try to cheer her up after her brother died. I mean, I wasn't sure she was that interested in me, and there was this Duke called Orsino who was trying to court her as well and she wouldn't even see _him_ – but Toby said she was just being distant to keep me interested, and I needed to try harder. And in the meantime, Maria – she's Olivia's housekeeper, only now she's married to Toby – well, she decided it would be a good idea to write Malvolio a fake love-letter from Olivia, because he'd always wanted to marry her so he'd become the Count and could throw us out – so he got dressed up in what were his idea of trendy clothes and went in grinning like an idiot and…'

'And this is turning into a very long story, and I'm sure this _gentleman_ would like a rest now,' I said, trying to make the word 'gentleman' sound as though I meant it.

'No, go on, what happened next?' asked the old man. 'Did she think you were mad, and throw you in the moat to try to bring you to your senses?'

'The Countess Olivia is not in the habit of throwing her servants in the moat,' I said stiffly (and there wasn't a moat anyway). 'No, she was called away by an urgent message, so she asked her uncle, Sir Toby, to take charge of me, and I thought that was my cue to assert myself by talking down to him. And he locked me up, and it was several days before I was freed, and then only by having to grovel to the Countess's jester for help. And if you must know, I've had to leave a perfectly good job because it would be impossible for me to exercise any authority, and I still have nightmares about it sometimes, which shows how hilarious it was!'

'And anyway,' continued Sir Andrew, 'we none of us had a chance, because Olivia was in love with Orsino's new page-boy who turned out to be a girl who was in love with Orsino, and Toby got me to fight a duel with her – the page-boy-girl, I mean, not Olivia – but it turned out to be her brother and he beat us up, and now Olivia's married to him, and Toby doesn't want to be my friend any more, and I don't think he ever really liked me, he was just pretending to because he enjoyed laughing at me and spending my money. I thought he'd be like a sort of brother, because we'd fought the same enemy and been wounded together – you know, like the knights-errant in the legends?'

'No, don't be a knight-errant; be a knight erring, it's much more fun. You wouldn't want to die without having had a few adventures in your time, would you? Come on, have a drink and cheer up.'


	4. Chapter 4

[still told by Malvolio]

'Knight-errants have to be in love, like Sir Lancelot, don't they?' prattled Sir Andrew, refilling the two glasses. 'Are you in love?'

'No, not _in love_, exactly,' said the old man, 'but I tried shagging married women, just like Sir Lancelot. It was after I'd been banished, and I was bored and fed up and broke – well, not all _that_ broke, the King was paying me a decent pension as long as I didn't bother him, but not enough to drown my sorrows, so really he owed me more considering he was the one who caused my sorrows in the first place. Well, anyway, I told my followers to bugger off and stop depending on me, tried to find jobs for the ones who were too clumsy to be any good as thieves, and had a go at seducing women with rich husbands.' He chuckled reminiscently. 'It could have worked, too, only the ones I chose turned out to be best friends, and they noticed that I'd sent them identical love-letters by the same post. Still, they _might_ have been up for a spot of group sex – it was worth a try! Trouble was, I'd probably found the last town in the world where the sexual revolution hadn't happened yet, but they were just about modern enough not to know about _droit de seigneur_, so I was on a loser either way, and those tight-arsed bitches decided to gang up on me and get revenge.'

'What sort of revenge?' I asked, wondering how this fat, ageing slob could ever have imagined that he was anyone's idea of a romantic liaison.

'Oh, inviting me round just before their husbands got back, so that I had to be smuggled out hidden in a basket of dirty laundry that got tipped into the canal, or disguised as somebody's aunt, only the husband turned out to hate the aunt as well, so he beat me up. Still, it's supposed to be third time lucky, so when they asked me to meet them in the local park at midnight, dressed as the ghost of an ancient gamekeeper with deer's horns, I thought, well, I've partied long past midnight most nights, I've been a highway robber before dawn, I ought to stand a chance over respectable husbands who'd be asleep at that hour. Only I didn't know they'd got their husbands in on the act, _and_ the entire town including the priest and the doctor, who were both immigrants who could barely speak English and wanted to see an English knight getting his come-uppance. All I knew was that suddenly both my girlfriends had run off, and a horde of fairies and goblins and satyrs had come to pinch me and burn me with their candles, and I kept telling myself I didn't believe in fairies, but that wasn't much help if fairies believed in me, and even if they weren't really fairies, if they set fire to me they could still fry me in my own fat. It's all the Puritans' fault, you know; ever since they started the campaign to close the theatres, people have started making their own entertainment.'

'Were they real fairies?' asked Sir Andrew.

'Of course not! They were just kids from the local school in fancy dress. And then my girlfriends and their husbands came back and told me what an idiot I was to think anyone would want to have an affair with me, and then they forgave me and invited me to dinner.'

'What did you do?' I asked.

'Went with them, and had venison pasties and cakes and spiced wine.'

'You _accepted_ a dinner invitation from your enemies?' I was horrified. Somehow, the man's debauchery and criminality didn't seem as grotesque as his complete absence of pride and his refusal to bear a grudge.

'Of course I did. They'd finished being my enemies, and now they were willing to be friends. They're not a bad lot, really: totally bourgeois and conventional, of course, but they can't help that. And anyway, it had been hours since supper-time, and I was hungry.' He took a drink, and seemed lost in thought for a moment. 'I just wish I could have told the young King about it. I suppose when he heard about it, he just thought it was a good thing he'd got rid of me when he did, but if I could have told him about it, he'd have laughed until his knees gave way, and – oh God, I miss him!'

He began to sob uncontrollably, and Sir Andrew threw his arms round him and cried out, 'I know!' and they wept together. I forced myself to stand aloof and keep thinking, 'What a pair of big babies: laughing one moment and howling the next!' It would have been all too easy to give into the moment and cry with them, for the hopes we had lost and the people we had thought loved us, and the terrible loneliness of disillusion.

And then we heard the voice: 'Arise, Sir John Oldcastle, Knight of the Round Table.' I can't explain where it came from, except that the voice was certainly in the room, not someone calling through the door. Sir Andrew and I edged away warily, but the old man, who had been slouching against the pillows, sat upright, looking suddenly fully alert. He pulled on a bathrobe (the cord of which didn't quite meet round his waist) over his nightshirt, swallowed the last of his drink, and then swung his legs down from the bed and, grunting with effort, stood upright. I think the voice was still talking to him, although we couldn't hear it any more. I am quite certain that he wasn't mad or hallucinating, but that, somehow, he seemed to be stepping out of our world, or his, or wherever we were at present.

'Of course, you do know that I'm a thief and a coward and a drunkard, and that I've already been banished by one king, don't you?' he asked, quite cheerfully. 'You realise that by the time I've been there five minutes, probably I'll have given Sir Galahad a black eye for being such a sanctimonious twat, and he'll challenge me to a duel and I'll panic and run away and you'll need to rescue me? I'll be nothing but trouble, and you'll be ashamed of me.'

Presumably the voice said something reassuring, because he grinned. 'You know what? You're absolutely right! After all, when you chose the best knights in the world, they either feuded with each other or had sex with your wife or insisted on being so pure and virginal in order to find the Holy Grail that they must have been unbearable. So if you recruit the worst knights instead, it should work out better. That's what I always did, when I was conscripting soldiers; if they couldn't bribe me not to enlist them, they were obviously good army material. Well, foot soldiers: they're just cannon-fodder anyway, aren't they?'

He broke off, as if, for the first time, the voice was shocked by what he said, and was rebuking him angrily. At last he said slowly, 'No. I suppose it wasn't funny for the people who got killed. They were men who wanted to live just as much as I did, only I was leading from behind and they hadn't got any armour, so I survived and they didn't. I don't know – maybe if I'd been taught by someone like Merlyn when I was a boy, I'd have grown into a decent man – well, it's too late now, but – do you still want me with you, now you know what I'm like?' He brightened. 'Good, that's okay then. Let's go.' And he walked towards the door, opened it, and disappeared.

Sir Andrew and I followed into the corridor, wondering whether we were going to find the man's cronies guffawing, 'You didn't fall for that one, did you, Jack? God, you're so gullible!' But there was nobody there. When we went back through the doorway, we were back in Sir Andrew's bedroom, with his clothes and suitcases, a small stack of phrasebooks and tourist guides, the notebook in which he wrote down any unusual words or phrases that he thought might make him sound intelligent, the viol he had been trying to learn to play for as long as I could remember, and an expensively-embroidered saddle which had belonged to an even more expensive horse which he had mislaid somewhere along the line. 'Shall we start packing now?' I suggested.

Sir Andrew yawned. 'No, let's leave it till the morning. Do you think he'll be all right with King Arthur?'

'He'll be fine,' I snorted. 'He's a knight, and outrageous enough to be funny, which means he can behave as badly as he likes and people will just chuckle indulgently and say what a character he is. I think when they say someone is "a character", they mean they wish he was fictional. Anyway, I don't suppose he really wanted to go with King Arthur, do you?'

'Of course he did!' insisted Sir Andrew. 'That's why he was arguing about it, because he had to make sure it was really true, because he didn't want to be hurt that way again.'

'_Again_? You didn't really believe his story about having been some prince's favourite, did you? As if anyone would want to be friends with someone like that!'

'Yes, I did believe him, actually,' said Sir Andrew. 'I think he needs to be loyal to someone who'll be loyal to him. I know he probably isn't a very nice person, but neither are we, and neither's Toby or Maria or anyone else we know, except maybe Olivia, and we're probably never going to see her again. There's no law saying only good people can have friends, you know.'

And that was the miracle: not a fat old man appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing in the company of a mythical king, but that Sir Andrew Aguecheek had actually produced an idea of his own. Generally he knew two ways of dealing with people: either echoing their words and views in the hope that they would like him, or trying to be a fiery, quarrelsome young gallant who challenged people to duels for no particular reason (but usually forgot that challenges to mortal combat are not supposed to be signed, 'Love from Andrew'). I had never heard him express a considered opinion on anything.

I had intended to wake Sir Andrew early the next morning to make a start on packing up his luggage (I had already dealt with my own), but in fact he was the one who came knocking at my door, looking rather dazed. 'I say, Malvolio,' he burst out, 'did all that really happen, last night? I mean, finding my room had turned into someone else's room, and then he went off with King Arthur?'

I looked him straight in the eye. 'If you're trying to tell me you had a strange dream last night,' I said calmly, 'then it was probably the result of indigestion. Do you think a cup of tea would help to clear your head?'

'Oh. Uh, yes, please. Milk and three sugars.'

'If you wish to destroy your teeth, that is entirely your decision, sir,' I said, and went down to order two teas (one with milk and three sugars, one black with lemon) and to check the morning papers. Among the Illyrian newspapers were several foreign papers, including the London _Times_. I browsed through it while I was waiting for the tea to be ready, and noticed an item in the Obituaries section. The name wasn't Oldcastle, but the man in the picture, looking cheerfully drunk at a party somewhere, was almost certainly the man who had been talking to us. He had died in London the evening before.


	5. Chapter 5

[told by the knight formerly known as Sir John Oldcastle]

There's a perfectly simple explanation for the confusion about my name. My author, who was probably a secret Roman Catholic, had been amusing himself naming me after various Protestant martyrs, because I'm not religious and I don't have any principles I'd miss breakfast for, let alone die for. (The original Sir John Oldcastle, my namesake, was one of the Lollard rebels beheaded in the fifteenth century.) At any rate, my author had kept having to change my name to avoid being sued for libel by the descendants of people whose names he'd used. Let's just say, for now, that I am a knight, a fairly unsuccessful seducer, the second-most beloved gangster in English fiction (after Robin Hood, but a good way ahead of Fagin) and an outrageous liar. I had grown old (all right: even older) in the service of one of the finest writers ever, and now he had decided to kill me off. That's entirely his decision, of course, and if he thinks anyone is going to bother going to see the sequel that doesn't include me, he has my pity, as he is clearly losing his touch.

When King Arthur called for me, I had no idea whether this was another hallucination or a dream, or, as Malvolio thought, just my friends playing a trick on me again. I could see and hear the King, a grey-bearded man not much younger than I was, but leaner and tougher-looking and dressed in chain-mail, and I knew that I wanted to follow him, more than I had ever wanted anything. He put his hand under my arm to support me as I stumbled towards the door, and, when it opened, I found myself standing on cool, dewy grass, with the inn I'd been staying in nowhere to be seen. It was midnight, and there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before: so many that the famous constellations were hidden behind a cast of extras who were all determined to be noticed. I didn't know where I was, except that I wasn't in London, but I could put off finding out until the morning. It was probably a very beautiful scene, but in the meantime I was shivering and my teeth were chattering with a combination of sickness, cold, and fear of the unknown.

'It's not far now,' the King said. 'We're camping just over there – where Cheiron's got the campfire going,' and he pointed to an orange glow a few hundred yards away. It might not seem very far to the King of the Round Table, but I dreaded walking, especially in the dark and barefoot, in long wet grass that caught around my ankles.

'Haven't you got horses?' I asked. 'I'd have brought my bay mare, if I'd known.' In fact, I'd had to sell my horse months ago to pay off the interest on various debts (and had then spent part of it on getting drunk, lost the rest playing dice, and forgotten all about the debts), but King Arthur wasn't to know that.

'I haven't brought any with me, unless you count Cheiron,' said the King. 'I'm just on holiday at the moment, walking from here back to Camelot, and I don't plan to enter any jousts or tournaments. I thought, once you were feeling better, you might want to come with me. But for now, you'd better come and get some sleep.'

So I trudged with him towards the camp, trampling countless poor slugs and snails on the way. The person called Cheiron was kneeling by the fire, but was still much taller than an ordinary man standing upright. I couldn't see in the firelight precisely what he was, but his voice was friendly. 'Hi, Arthur,' he called. 'Good evening – are you Sir John?'

'I'm what's left of him.'

'Do you want a mug of tea? I've got the kettle on.'

'I'd prefer wine, if you've got any,' I said.

'Afraid not. We're a bit low on supplies right now, but there's a town with a market on Monday. I can offer you tea, hot chocolate, or vegetable soup.'

'Well, I'll have chocolate, then.'

'And I'd like a cup of tea, please,' said Arthur. 'Thank you, Cheiron.'

'You're welcome,' said Cheiron. He helped Arthur off with his armour, and handed us our drinks, and we stood warming ourselves by the fire. I couldn't see why a true king would venture anywhere without a good supply of wine, but at least the chocolate was hot and sweet and velvety, and my teeth had stopped chattering. Finally, Cheiron gave me a hot-water-bottle, and Arthur and I crawled into the tent beside the campfire, where there were two mats rolled out with two sleeping-bags on them. My sleeping-bag was much too narrow to wriggle into, but it turned out to be the kind that unfastens to turn into a quilt, and, as I was still shivering slightly, Arthur handed me a blanket to go on top, and a pair of thick woolly socks.

'Well, sweet dreams,' he said. 'Sleep tight, good knight.'

'No such luck!' I muttered. 'If there's only tea or hot chocolate, I'll have to learn to sleep sober.' I wasn't sure how long I'd survive this sort of hardship, but, for now, I fell asleep almost at once.


	6. Chapter 6

[still told by Sir John]

I woke much earlier than I'd intended, because sunlight was flooding through the thin fabric of the tent, and the birds were all singing different tunes to try to drown out one another's voices. Arthur had already left the tent, leaving his mat and his sleeping-bag rolled into neat bundles. 'When am I?' I mumbled drowsily.

'Early June,' said a voice outside: the voice of the person called Cheiron whom I had met last night.

'Apart from June?'

'Mythological Britain, possibly any time between the 5th century and the Middle Ages, depending on who's telling Arthur's story. I'm from Greek mythology, myself, but I'm just visiting here. How are you feeling?'

'Better, I think,' I said. 'Last night, I thought I was going to go numb from the feet up, and, when the numbness reached my heart, I'd be dead.'

'Like Socrates,' said the voice, with a laugh. 'Well, it was pretty dark last night, but I don't _think_ I got the chocolate and the hemlock mixed up. Socrates was part satyr, too, you know.'

'Are satyrs the ones with horns and goats' hooves?'

'No, that's fauns. Satyrs – the sons of Silenus – are the ones with horses' ears and horses' hindquarters. And I'm a centaur, which is like a satyr but with more legs, and an even worse reputation for riotous behaviour.'

I crawled out of the tent, blinking in the sunlight. We were camping in a large, grassy clearing surrounded by woodland, sloping down towards a stream. Arthur, slumped against a tree at the edge of the clearing, had probably got up early to read the Bible and say his prayers, but had fallen asleep again. Cheiron turned out to be a chestnut stallion, fifteen hands high at the withers, but, with the addition of a man's body down to the waist, over eight feet tall in total, and powerfully built. He was bare to the waist, and had curly golden hair and a reddish beard, matching his chestnut coat and the golden tail which was swishing at flies. I tried to remember what I'd learnt of Greek mythology, a long time ago. 'I thought centaurs were supposed to be wise and noble and valiant,' I said.

'Well, we're a mixed bunch,' said Cheiron. 'My friend Pholus was one of the gentlest people I've ever known, and very learned and philosophical, but then he wasn't a typical centaur. He was one of Silenus's sons, and all the rest of them were satyrs like their dad, and Pholus was a bit too quiet and sober to fit in with most centaurs _or_ satyrs. I don't think poor old Silenus quite knew what to make of him. Mind you, Papa Silenus could be profound too, sometimes, and then came out with such gloomy pronouncements that he needed another drink to make him forget them! He was an ancestor of Socrates and of Aesop, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was your ancestor as well; you certainly look a lot like him. But as for centaurs – well, I've lived enough centuries to learn a fair amount, especially about healing. But most centaurs don't live long enough to be mature. Centaur adolescence lasts five hundred years, and during that time, I'm afraid we're such obnoxious yobs that a lot of us get killed before we've learnt wisdom.'

I wasn't following most of this, but I remembered what I'd wanted to find out. 'Am I dead?' I asked. 'Am I in Heaven or Hell? Or am I immortal, if I'm a satyr?'

'Hmm – there's no easy answer to that. You've died in your world, so you would be dead if you were back there, but you're alive here, because you're standing here talking to me. A Pythagorean might say you'd transmigrated; a Hindu might call it reincarnation; a Roman Catholic might say you're passing through Purgatory. I don't know what you'd call it.'

I shrugged. 'Oh, well, I don't suppose I'll be dead for long. My author's bound to change his mind sooner or later. He's always having characters apparently die and then turn out to be alive after all.'

'I'm afraid he really means it this time,' said Cheiron gently, kneeling down and putting his arm around my shoulders. 'Still, you've lived through three plays, and only been proclaimed dead in the fourth. If your author hadn't loved you so much, he could have killed you off within three scenes, let alone three plays. That's what all Coarse Actors want: to steal the scene in the first half, and be dead in Act Three and out of costume and in the pub by the interval.'

'Coarse Actors with only three lines to say want that. If they could be the star, they'd want to blaze on until they burnt themselves out, and if I'm not the brightest star of all, at least I'm as round as a planet. I bet you a thousand pounds my author resurrects me by the end of the week.'

'You haven't _got_ a thousand pounds,' pointed out Cheiron. 'And I don't think your author knew what else to do with you. He couldn't go on writing you as a cheerful rogue who loves food and wine and sex and doesn't worry about anything else, when he'd seen your hopes shattered and your best friend coldly rejecting you. On the other hand, he couldn't make the two of you friends again, still clowning around together as if nothing had changed, because everything _had_ changed. On the other hoof,' (Cheiron pawed the ground with his right foreleg) 'he could hardly expect the audience to take you seriously as a tragic hero, could he?'

'No, I'm not exactly the King Lear type,' I admitted. 'But if I'm dead and my soul's flown to the next world, why's it flown here in the same heavy body, with the same aches and pains? And why call it reincarnation, as if I'd been reborn as a tin of condensed milk?'

'If you're a relative of Socrates and of Aesop, I'm sure you'll find the answer,' said Cheiron. 'But in the meantime, I ought to give you a medical check-up. I'm afraid there's nowhere really private for it – I couldn't fit into your tent, and there wouldn't be enough light anyway – but if you don't mind being examined in the open air, I don't expect there'll be many people passing this way, early on Sunday morning.'

'I'm not embarrassed,' I said. 'But if you prick me with a needle and I flinch, it's not because I'm afraid of cold steel, only that I'm enraged at having no sword to defend myself. You've heard of heroes who fear death no more than a pinprick, haven't you? Well, I'm one of them; I hate injections just as much as I hate death!'

'I believe you,' said Cheiron with a smile. 'I've been tutor to some of the greatest heroes who ever lived – Heracles, Jason, Achilles – and any of them would rather have fought three dragons than had one tetanus vaccination. I'm afraid I will have to take a blood sample, but I'll try not to hurt you more than I have to. And it will hurt _less_ if you can manage to keep still and not flinch.'

So I tried to bear staunchly while Cheiron examined me from head (I may have been the first man to have his teeth examined by a horse, and informed not only was I as old as I looked, but I needed several fillings) to toe (perpetually sore from either gout or French disease; I could usually pass off my slight lameness as an authentic war-wound, but not in front of a centaur who had been healer to the Greek warriors). At last he said, 'Well – would you rather I called you Sir John, or just John?'

'I don't mind,' I said. 'Jack, if you'd like.'

'Well, Jack, whatever illness finally killed you, obviously ceased when you died in your own world. But the bad news is that you've still got all the underlying problems, physical and psychological, that had weakened you so that it could kill you. I'll need to do some tests on the samples I've taken, but it looks as though you've got a couple of infections that should clear up with medicine, and I can make an ointment that should stop that rash from itching so much in the meantime. But, obviously, you need to avoid having sex until you're fully recovered.'

'Why?' I demanded. It didn't make much practical difference, as I didn't have any money to go to a brothel, and these days I tended not to meet women who'd sleep with me for free, but I wasn't going to be ordered around by a man who was half a horse.

'Well, it wouldn't be very kind to pass any diseases on to a woman who might not be able to get treatment in time, would it?'

'Oh, come on – if I go to a prostitute, I risk catching something off her, and she risks catching something off me – surely that's a fair exchange? It's an occupational hazard. Honestly, this is Health and Safety at Work gone mad! Anyway, apart from that, am I okay?'

'Other than that – and I'm sure doctors in your own world have told you this – what's mainly wrong with you stems from the facts that you eat too much, drink too much, and don't take any exercise.'

'No, actually they _didn't_ tell me, because I never bothered turning up for appointments with doctors,' I explained. 'I'm very hard-of-listening to anything I don't want to hear.'

'Well, _I'm_ telling you,' said Cheiron. 'Your blood pressure and your resting heart rate are so high that I'm amazed you've got any heartbeats left.'

'In that case, I don't plan to waste any of them on exercising. Especially when you've just banned me from the one sport I enjoy.'

'Don't worry, Jack, you'll be fine soon,' said Cheiron. 'I can mix you some medicines that should help, but for the time being, I'm afraid you'll need to be careful what you eat, and avoid drinking alcohol at all for now. You see, some of these medicines don't work if you're drinking.'

I turned pleading eyes on him: eyes that would have melted the hardest heart, except, of course, that of a doctor. 'You mean you've save my life only to make me _healthy_?'

'There are lots of reasons why Arthur and I saved you,' said Cheiron, 'and two of them are that I love you, and that you were destined to go to be with King Arthur when you died. Talking of Arthur, I'd better wake him up now.'

'Cheiron,' I said, 'you seem to know practically everything about who I am and why I've come here. Does Arthur?'

'No, and I won't tell him anything without your permission, unless it's a matter of life and death' said Cheiron. 'You can tell him as much or as little as you choose about your background, but I don't think he'd be very shocked by anything you told him.'

By this time, the king had woken up and was walking over to join us. 'Good morning,' he said. 'I'm sorry I'm not being a very good host. Did you sleep well?'

'I did until the birds started up. Are they always this noisy in the countryside?'

'They are at dawn. They all get up early to tell each other, "Clear off my berry bush!" and "Look out, there are two humans camping in the clearing!" and then they quieten down and go and find breakfast. Speaking of which, would you like a mug of tea and some porridge?'

Considering that Arthur had saved my life, it seemed churlish to point out that only three classes of creatures live on oats, and that I wasn't a horse or a Scot and didn't intend to be a prisoner again. So I said, as politely as possible, 'Well, that's very kind, but – you wouldn't happen to have bacon, sausages, and eggs, would you?'

'Not at the moment, no,' said Arthur, busy lighting a fire. 'It's hard to keep things fresh, travelling at this time of year, and as Cheiron's a vegetarian, I tend to eat what he does – there's less washing-up that way. Look at those goldfinches!' he added in an excited whisper. 'Aren't they beautiful?'

'Is it true that Merlyn turned you into a bird once, when you were a boy?' I asked.

'He turned me into lots of birds. The first time, he made me a falcon in the castle mews, because I was fascinated by hawks and falcons. Then I was a tawny owl, which was much more fun, because Merlyn had an owl who taught me to fly and took me to meet the goddess Athene. But being a wild goose was the best. I wish I could have married a goose, and stayed a goose all my life, migrating back and forth across the sea.' He fetched a pan of water from the stream, frightening the goldfinches, and threw them a handful of oats and some dried currants as an apology before he set the pan over the fire.

'It's a pity Merlyn isn't here now,' I said. 'If he could turn you into an eagle and me into a vulture and Cheiron into a hippogriff, we could probably fly back to Camelot in a day, instead of all this walking and camping.'

'I like walking,' said Arthur. 'And anyway, the being turned into animals was only when I was a boy. I enjoyed it while it lasted, and if it hadn't been for the lessons I'd learnt from fish and falcons and badgers, I couldn't have grown into the man who pulled the sword from the stone and became king. But if I was to be a king of humans, I couldn't go on being a bird or a badger or a grass-snake. I do miss Merlyn, though,' he sighed, handing me a mug of tea. 'Not because he could do magic for me, but because of the way he used to keep dead mice in his hat to feed his owl, and the way he grumbled when his spells didn't work, and the way he glared at Kay and me when we were being very obtuse and refusing to think – I just miss him. I know he'd always told us that one day he'd go away, but that didn't make it any easier when it happened. Sugar?' added the king, handing me a screw-capped jar.

The sugar came in little cubes, of the sort that ladies pick up with sugar-tongs and say, 'One lump or two?' I stirred three spoonfuls of lumps into my mug, which was less than I'd have liked, but still enough to make Arthur say, 'Go easy – that's all the sugar we've got left until tomorrow,' so I wondered why I'd bothered being polite.

'Would you like porridge with currants in?' he went on. 'That might taste more interesting than just plain oats.'

'Yes, please,' I said, defeated. 'Are you and Cheiron having some?'

'No, we need to head off to church in a minute. I think the birds have quietened down now, so if you're still tired, you can always go back to bed after breakfast.'


	7. Chapter 7

[Sir John continues]

When Arthur and Cheiron were gone, I returned to the tent and tried to work out what to do next. I didn't seem to be a prisoner, but on the other hand, travelling with a centaur who was determined to restore me to peak fitness and a king who was addicted to walking, camping, and plain food, might be far worse than being in prison, where at least I'd had a roof over my head.

So, if I was going to escape, this could be my only chance. If anyone wondered what I was doing wandering around in my dressing-gown (none of Arthur's clothes would have fitted me, and Cheiron never wore any), I was a poor old widower who lived with my married daughter, but she was wicked and had evicted me in the middle of the night, so I was travelling to seek the mercy of my other daughter, who lived at... except that I didn't know where I was, or what towns and villages were nearby. Well, if anyone asked any awkward questions, I was either deaf or mad, or both. And then tomorrow, I'd be a rich merchant who had been robbed of everything I possessed while I spent the night in an inn, and the innkeeper, instead of investigating the theft, had thrown me out without breakfast because I no longer had any money to pay for it!

There was a box in the tent that might contain gold, with a lock that looked so flimsy that any piece of wire would serve to pick it. Then again, did King Arthur actually have any money with him? I wasn't sure when the tradition that kings shouldn't carry money came in. My prince had always stood his round in the pub, and usually lent me money when it was my round, but that had been before he became king. Anyway, I wasn't going to think about him, or about anyone in my past life. I could manage on my own.

I crept forward to the box. It wasn't even locked, and there was a small amount of gold inside, with a map lying on top. The map showed much more forest, less farmland and fewer towns than I'd expected, and various places in the forest were labelled, 'dragons', 'giants', 'wicked baron who flogs people with thorns', 'killer rabbit', and 'knights who say Ni!' Most of these were crossed out, presumably because someone had dealt with the problem. There was even a route pencilled in up to the place where we were currently camped, near a small town. It looked as though King Arthur had left it there on purpose, to say, 'There you are – if you don't want to come with us, take what you want and clear off.'

Well, honestly! How dare Arthur assume I was such a villain that I'd steal from my hosts when they'd shown me nothing but kindness? I closed the box, and lay back on my sleeping-bag to think it through. Did I owe Arthur any allegiance? Maybe, considering he'd declared me a Knight of the Round Table last night. Should I trust him? Probably not. He'd been friendly enough this morning, but it was anyone's guess what he'd do when he came back from church, depending on what the sermon had been about and what part of the Bible they'd been studying.

The Bible is a strange book, and I don't see how God could have expected people to follow commandments like 'Thou shalt not steal,' and 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But if there was one commandment I desperately wished I had obeyed, it was: 'Put not thy trust in princes.' I tried to remember where that was in the Bible: somewhere in Psalms or Proverbs, I thought. Arthur's Bible was lying propped against his pillow. I opened it near the middle, and found myself at the beginning of the Book of Job, which is a magnificent tragedy, and one I hadn't read for ages. People who talk about 'the patience of Job' should remember that Job, who could be brave through a painful disease, the death of his family, and the destruction of everything he owned, couldn't endure his friends sitting around telling him he must have done something to deserve all his misfortunes and would be restored if he'd only repent. I know just how he felt – and Job found out that God is every bit as pissed off with religious people as Job was.

I closed the book quickly when I heard Arthur and Cheiron returning, in case they thought I was pious as well. Cheiron was in high spirits, and singing 'To Be A Pilgrim'. 'Hello, Jack,' he called, as I emerged from the tent. 'It's a pity you couldn't come with us this morning; the sermon was on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and it's one of my favourite stories.'

It was one of my favourite stories, too, but I couldn't admit that without sounding like a prig. 'I didn't know centaurs went to church,' I said.

'Well, no, I can't fit inside. But I stood in the churchyard and listened through the open door.'

'I mean, why are you a Christian, when you're from Greek mythology?'

'That's exactly why I'm a Christian,' said Cheiron. 'I've seen far too much of the gods in my own family to believe in _them_. Cronos, my father, became king of the gods by castrating his own father, the Sky-Father, so then Cronos was always paranoid that one of his own children would grow up to overthrow him. He didn't bother about me, because I'm illegitimate, but he ate my brothers Poseidon and Hades, and my sisters Hera, Hestia, and Demeter. Only my youngest brother, Zeus, escaped, and later on he disguised himself as a doctor and gave my father a medicine to make him vomit up all our other brothers and sisters. So then they chained my father up, and Zeus became king of the gods, married Hera and was continually unfaithful to her, and spent half his time quarrelling with her and the other half worrying in case another god came and usurped him. Do you realise, the reason Athene was born out of Zeus's skull was that he'd turned her mum into a fly and swallowed her to try to stop Athene being born at all? Mind you, Athene became his favourite of all his children once we'd bandaged his skull back together after she came out. Lovely, clever girl, and her dad adores her.

'But you can't worship someone like Zeus, when you've seen him one minute flattering his wife, and the next threatening to beat her up because she's caught him out in a lie. So, when I heard of a God who is both a Father who loves and trusts his Son, _and_ a Son who loves and obeys his Father, _and_ is the current of love flowing between them, I knew that was the God I would worship. After all, if there aren't any better gods than the ones in my family, God help us!'

'I'll have to tell Mordred he's my son, as soon as we get home,' sighed Arthur. 'He's probably guessed by now anyway. And he's certainly guessed that I don't really like him as much as my other nephews, and that I wish he wasn't even my nephew, let alone my son as well, and I know he can't stand me or Guinevere.'

'Oh, it's probably just a phase,' I said soothingly. 'Lots of teenagers stay out late, get drunk, hang out with friends you don't approve of, and get into trouble with the police. I still do, and I haven't been a teenager for half a century.'

'Yes, but Mordred is thirty-eight and he wants to break up my marriage and have my wife burnt at the stake. Dear knight, do you have any children?'

'Not that I know of.'

'Well, supposing you'd accidentally slept with a woman you didn't know was your sister, who was a witch, and then, many years later when you were married to someone else, your incestuous son turned up on your doorstep? What would you do?'

'Oh, take him down to the pub, get him really drunk and teach him to play strip poker, and chat up the barmaids, I expect.'

'You wouldn't feel ashamed?'

'Of course not! I don't see why there's this prejudice that people who are bastards in birth have to be complete bastards in character as well. After all, I'm from a noble family, but I don't behave the way a knight should.'

'You're a better man than I am, at any rate,' said Arthur, 'because I was ashamed. Oh, not about the illegitimacy – I'm illegitimate myself, and so is Cheiron, and so was Galahad, who was the noblest and purest-hearted knight who ever came to the Round Table. And even the fact that it was incest wouldn't have been the end of the world, if I'd admitted that I'd made a mistake, acknowledged Mordred as my son when he was born, and looked after him. But instead, I was so horrified when I found out what I'd done, and so terrified that he was going to grow up to overthrow me, that I had all the babies born at that time killed. Mordred was the only one who survived, and now he's got every reason to hate me.

'It wasn't as if I'd even meant to become king,' he went on, with tears in his eyes, as if he was pleading for forgiveness. 'It was only because I was trying to be a good squire to Sir Kay, when he'd left his sword at the inn and wanted to compete in a tournament and I happened to find a sword stuck in a stone. But when I found out what I was, I'd meant to try to be a good king, and then, a couple of years into my reign, I turned out to be a worse king than Herod. If I had any decency, I'd have myself beheaded, but that would mean Mordred would take over, and I hate to think of what the country would be like under him.'

There wasn't really anything to say in consolation, but I said it anyway. 'Look, if you'd been the best dad in the world, played football with him and read him bedtime stories every evening and taken him fishing every weekend, he'd still have gone through a phase of slamming doors and accusing you of ruining his life. It's only natural.'

'Yes, but I wish he'd had it when he was younger and got it over with, like chicken-pox. And I wish it wasn't literally true that I'd ruined his life. Still,' Arthur added, 'I'll have a talk with him and try to sort something out when we get home, and in the meantime, we might as well make the most of this holiday. I thought we might rest this afternoon, and go into town tomorrow morning to buy you some clothes and boots, and a sword, of course, and stock up on provisions, and have lunch in a restaurant. And after that, you're welcome to travel with Cheiron and me if you want – we'd probably only be walking a few miles in the afternoon, so it'd give you a chance to break your boots in – but if not, of course you can go where you choose.'

'I'll go to the market and the apothecary while you two are clothes shopping,' said Cheiron. 'But I need new shoes as well, so I'll meet you at the blacksmith's.'

'Do you think I'd better have a suit of armour made, as well?' I asked.

'You can if you want, but I don't think you'll really need it at the moment, and it's heavy stuff to walk in,' said Arthur. 'The country's a lot more peaceful now than it was when I came to power – I couldn't have sent so many men out on the quest for the Holy Grail if I'd still needed them to deal with rogue barons back home. We might meet a few giants, maybe the odd small dragon, but I can generally tackle them on my own. You ought to have a sword to be on the safe side, just as Cheiron's got his bow and arrows, but I don't really expect to run into trouble.'

'Oh well, you can rely on seasoned war-horses like us,' I said. I wasn't sure whether I was more relieved that the king didn't want me to fight for him, or confused because I didn't know what he wanted. If he'd been hurriedly rounding up every fighting man he could find, however old, unreliable, and irresponsible, because Mordred had destroyed the Round Table and seized power and there was war in the land – well, I'd have grumbled about not being on horseback, but I'd have marched in armour and tried to give the impression of being a willing soldier, and turned up _nearly_ in time for the battle, explaining that I would have been there earlier, but I'd had to rescue a maiden from a three-headed giant, and whenever I chopped one of its heads off, another two grew in its place, so that it was an eleven-headed giant before the maiden remembered that we needed to cauterise the neck-stumps with fire, and anyway, when the eleven-necked corpse at last lay on the ground, the maiden had implored me to make mad, passionate love to her, and though I had been sorely tempted because she was absolutely gorgeous, yet I had remembered that I was now a Knight of the Round Table and therefore devoted to chivalry and purity, and so I had spoken gravely to her like a father and counselled her to find a husband of her own age, and anyway, I was sorry I was late, and I'd try to be more attentive to my duty next time, but still, the Adventure Of The Eleven-Headed Giant _was_ going to be recorded in the chronicles, wasn't it, and incidentally could I borrow a thousand pounds? And Arthur – would either have laughed, or been furiously angry with me and told me never to come near him again. I didn't know him well enough to predict which.

But if he wasn't recruiting soldiers, what was he looking for? Was he another Lear, spurned by his own offspring, turned out of doors, and needing a Fool who would keep him company even in the wind and the rain? But he seemed gentle and penitent, as un-Lear-like as any man could be, and eager to ask his son's forgiveness. If anything, this was more like a reversed version of the Prodigal Son story – in which case, if Mordred, like Lear's daughters, objected to his father's choice of attendants, I might have to be sacrificed like the fatted calf.

By this time, Cheiron had built a fire and cooked 'lunch', which was a rather optimistic description of three bowls of lentil and barley broth with a bit of wild garlic. When we'd finished, and washed up in the stream, Cheiron said, 'You don't have to worry about the giants round here – they don't grow more than about ten feet tall in this country. But we used to have some terrifying ones in Greece, when I was younger. There was one I knew called Polyphemus, who was a nephew of mine, the son of my brother Poseidon...


	8. Chapter 8

[told by Cheiron]

Polyphemus son of Poseidon was one of a tribe of giants called cyclopes, because each of them had one huge, round eye like a wheel in the middle of his forehead. They used to work for another nephew of mine, Hephaestus son of Hera, hammering out thunderbolts for Zeus to throw at people he was angry with. They quite enjoyed that, because they liked hurting people, but they weren't happy at having to work together, or having to pay attention when Hephaestus explained the specifications for the thunderbolts. And when he tried to show them how to make something more complicated, like a machine, or something beautiful, like a picture in gold and silver to decorate a shield, they blanked out completely. So, all, in all, Hephaestus wasn't too disappointed when they all decided to quit their jobs and go and live as shepherds on an island where there were only cyclopes and sheep.

Well – _almost_ no-one except cyclopes and sheep. But at the time of this story, Silenus and his sons the satyrs were also there, slaves to Polyphemus, and sick at heart for their friend, Dionysus the god of wine and theatre, who had gone missing. Silenus had been Dionysus's foster-father, and loved the young god as much as he loved his own sons, and maybe even more. It wasn't just that Dionysus was a source of free drinks, but that he was so gloriously himself: Dionysus, who was the sweetest of all gods when he was in a good mood, and the most terrible of all gods when he was in a rage; Dionysus, who had lived in India and who rode a tiger; Dionysus, who loved to change his shape, and could look now like a handsome boy, now like a bull-calf, and now like a man as old and fat and bald as Silenus. You never knew what he was going to do next, and life was much more exciting when he was there.

But now, Dionysus had had to go away. He was the god of theatre, particularly in Athens, and now that all the best playwrights had died, Dionysus had decided to go down to the Underworld to plead for one of them to be restored to life. But then, which one should he choose? Euripides, whose plays were so thoughtful and so cleverly balanced between comedy and tragedy, and made ancient stories feel as if they were happening right now? Or Sophocles, who wrote the most perfectly-constructed tragedies of all? Or maybe Aeschylus, whose speeches were such rolling torrents of poetry that they held the audience spellbound, even if Dionysus himself wasn't sure what all the words meant?

It wasn't an easy decision, and Dionysus had said he might be away for some time. But, when he didn't return, Papa Silenus began to feel worried about him. What if Dionysus had been kidnapped by Hera again? She hated most of Zeus's illegitimate children, but especially Dionysus, and she was always plotting to harm him. Or what if Dionysus was ill? He'd always suffered from fits of madness, and then he did terrible things without realising what he was doing until it was too late.

So, one day, Silenus had said, 'Right, lads. Our bull-calf isn't coping on his own, and we're going to rescue him and bring him home.' And he and all the satyrs had bought a boat, and sailed out to try to search the world for Dionysus, but before they were even out of the Aegean, they were shipwrecked on the island of the cyclopes. Polyphemus had captured them and forced them to work as his slaves, Silenus mucking out the cave where the giant slept and where he kept his sheep at night, while the younger satyrs watched over the sheep on the hills every day. Often they sighed, 'We've got to get away – find Dionysus, find some women – remember those wild girls called maenads he's sometimes got with him? – and have lots to drink,' but they knew that Polyphemus was a man-eater, and probably a satyr-eater too, and he would certainly eat them if he caught them trying to escape. They longed to play music and dance, to gladden their sad hearts, but Polyphemus forbade them to make any unnecessary noise in case it frightened his sheep. So they led the sheep out to graze on the hillside, day after day, and watched to see if there was any sign of Dionysus or anyone else coming to rescue them.

Well, one day, when Silenus was busy plaiting withies into pens for the lambs in the cave, and wondering whether Dionysus was missing him as much as Silenus was missing Dionysus, he heard someone: 'Hello? Anyone at home?' So he hurried out to the mouth of the cave, and there were about a dozen humans, one of them – oh, could they be emissaries from Dionysus? – carrying a wine-skin.

Now, in those days, it wasn't polite to ask a stranger his name or who his father was – the idea was that you should be friendly to anyone who came to your door, and invite him to stay as long as he liked – but there was something about the leader carrying the wineskin that made Silenus blink and say, 'You're not – a son of Autolycus the Burglar, are you? You look just like him!'

'Grandson,' said the man. 'His daughter Anticlea was my mother, and my father is a farmer on Ithaca – that's if he hasn't died while I was fighting in Troy. My dad taught me to farm, and Grandpa Autolycus taught me...'

'How to be a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, I should think!' said Silenus, chuckling. 'I didn't know there _was_ anything to farm on Ithaca – isn't it just a rock sticking out of the sea?'

The man from Ithaca shrugged. 'Well, it's a rugged island, but it's _my_ island, and I'd give anything to get home and see my family again. My ship's been badly blown off course in a gale, or we wouldn't have come here. But I've got to admit, we don't have the lovely, fertile land in Ithaca you've got here – I'm surprised there isn't more farming going on, really. This would be a beautiful place to grow wheat and barley, and plant some vines and make wine...'

'Oh, wouldn't it just!' sighed Silenus. 'Still, I can't get my boys to settle down to farming and harvesting, so I've set them to minding sheep instead. I expect they'll be back with the flocks soon, but in the meantime, if you're hungry, I can offer you some meat and milk and cheese, if you'd like to trade that wine for it.'

So the leader of the Ithacans mixed a bowl of wine – well, you see, the kind of wine we drank in Greece in those days was very thick and heavy, like a cordial, so people drank it mixed with water, out of wide dishes. If you were an alcoholic, you might drink it mixed fifty-fifty with water, but most people mixed one part wine to three parts water, at least with normal wine. But _this_ wine was an exceptionally strong one, which might have been made by Dionysus himself for all I know, and one measure of wine to twenty measures of water made a drink as sweet and fragrant as anything you've ever tasted. I'm sorry, I shouldn't tantalise you like this when you can't drink, but this is important to the story – do you want me to go on? Okay, then...

So the Ithacan mixed the drinks, and Silenus selected the biggest lamb, cut its throat and put it to roast on a spit, and then he sliced up a ripe cheese to share among the humans as a starter while they waited for the meat to be ready. But as the lamb was cooking, and they were all sitting on the cave floor around the fire, passing the bowl around for a sip each, and the humans were telling Silenus how incredibly valiant they had all been at Troy, suddenly the younger satyrs came back with all the sheep. There was a stunned silence for a moment, and then one of the satyrs said, 'Dad, are you out of your mind? The boss will be back any minute, and when he finds out...'

'What do you mean, "the boss"?' demanded the Ithacan captain. 'I thought you were in charge?'

But at that moment, the mountains shook with heavy footsteps, and there was a rumble of a giant roaring out, as all giants do, 'Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Ithacan!' (I've never been sure how exactly giants smell nationality, but it's probably something to do with diet – being able to scent from the type of curry on someone's breath which part of India he comes from, or whether he's an Englishman who's had a vindaloo from the local takeaway.)

So, before Polyphemus could come any closer, Silenus smeared himself all over with blood from the lamb he'd been cooking, and staggered out to the entrance of the cave, clutching his head and groaning, 'Oh, master, they've half killed me! While the boys were out, this gang of twelve ruffians came against one poor old satyr, and I tried to stop them robbing you, but they beat me to the ground, grabbed your best lamb and slaughtered it, and by the time my boys came back, it was too late! Still, if you fancy a change from mutton, you could always have man for dinner...'

'Yeah! I will!' roared Polyphemus, and he rolled the huge boulder that he used as a door to block the mouth of the cave, so that nobody, human or satyr, could escape.

But the Ithacan captain pushed forward with the sweetest smile he could muster, and said, 'Oh, this servant of yours shouldn't be so ashamed of his virtues! He was proving himself a faithful steward to you by showing me the kind hospitality you would have done if you'd been here, sharing your food with me as Zeus teaches us all to share our food with strangers. But now he's embarrassed in case you'd have given us even more and you're angry with him for holding back. But don't worry, I'm sure you can give us more presents, and I've brought you a present, in return: a skin of wine to share with your friends?'

Polyphemus blinked his eye at the strange foreign words. 'What's "wine"?' he asked. 'And what are "friends"?'

The man tried to explain: 'Well, wine is – it's fruit juice that's turned into – very special fruit juice. And friends – they're people you like sharing your food and wine with.'

'What's "sharing"?' asked Polyphemus.

'I'll show you,' said the man. 'This stuff. Wine. Good to drink.'

'Like milk?' said Polyphemus.

'Yes, but even nicer.'

So Polyphemus rushed to the back of his cave, brought out the biggest drinking-bowl he had, filled it with wine to the brim and gulped it down before anyone could explain about diluting it.

'Ah! I'm hungry now!' he said. 'Can't be bothered to cook!' and he grabbed two of the Ithacan soldiers – not the leader who had offered him the wine – and gobbled them raw. 'That's nice!' he said. 'Need another drink to wash them down, though.' So Silenus filled his bowl again, and Polyphemus gulped it down. 'So that's "sharing", is it?' he asked. 'And you're a "friend"? What's your name, friend?'

The captain shrugged. 'Oh, I'm just nobody.'

Polyphemus thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, because one problem with being an ogre is that you don't get to hear many jokes. He guffawed until the roof of the cave shook. 'Hello, Nobody!' he cackled. 'Well, I tell you what: I'm Nobody's friend, so I'll eat Nobody last, and everyone else before him, because we cyclopes give presents to Nobody!' And he began to sing: '_I care for Nobody, no, not I, if Nobody cares for me!_'

Silenus nodded: 'Right, well, now you know what wine is, you can understand about "friends" and "sharing". I'll pour you another bowl, and you lie on your left side like this, the way they do at parties in Greece; you put a wreath on your head, like this; you take a slurp from the side of the bowl, like this; and then you pass it round.'

But Polyphemus just grabbed the bowl and downed it again. 'Friends, sharing, hospitality – who needs all those long words? I'll tell you: weak creatures! Men! Satyrs! People who believe in gods! But me, when I've got a bellyful of this _wine_ stuff, _I'm_ the god! I'm my very own Zeus, with my very own Ganymede to serve me! Come to bed, Ganymede!'


	9. Chapter 9

[Cheiron continues]

It took Silenus a moment to realise Polyphemus meant _him_ to be Ganymede, and by the time he'd managed to say, 'Look, you're not my type – we'll regret it in the morning...' Polyphemus had grabbed him and was dragging him off to the bedroom at the back of the cave. Silenus yelled, 'Come and rescue me, you cowards! He's trying to rape me! HELP!' and the other satyrs wondered whether they ought to do something. But, after all, hadn't Silenus himself always taught them that 'Advantage is a better soldier than rashness,'? And who were they to despise their father's teaching? So they decided to let Silenus solve the problem for himself. And a moment later, Silenus came staggering out, exclaiming, 'Honestly, what a lazy, drunken lump! He tried to grope me, I wriggled out of his way, and he just threw up, fell over and went to sleep! He's lying there snoring his head off right now!'

The other satyrs, who had seen their father in the same state many times, laughed about it: 'So, you've kept your virtue intact, have you?' 'Come off it – when was our dad ever virtuous?'

But the Ithacan captain shushed them and hissed, 'Now's your chance! Don't you want to be free? While your father was keeping the giant occupied, I've been sharpening this tree-trunk by the fire, and made it into a giant spear. Now, if you'll grab hold of it with me, we can drive it into the giant's eye and blind him, and then we'll all be able to escape! Come on, who wants to hold which end?'

The satyrs began to shuffle back, mumbling, 'I can't; I've hurt my hoof,' 'And there's all that vomit we might slip on – isn't that a health and safety hazard?' 'Yeah, I'm allergic to cyclops-vomit – it makes all the hairs in my tail fall out, and how am I going to swat flies with a bald tail?' So the human captain, and the four strongest of his men, picked up the log, thrust the sharpened end into the fire once more until it glowed with fire, and then ran to Polyphemus's bedroom and stabbed it into his eye.

At once he was awake, and roaring in pain: 'Help! Help! Nobody's attacking me!'

The giant in the cave to the east of Polyphemus shouted, 'Well, shut up and go to sleep, then!'

'But you don't understand!' yelled Polyphemus. 'Nobody's blinded me!'

'Well, of course they haven't, you idiot!' snapped the giant in the cave to the west. 'It's night-time, that's all! Now leave us in peace, will you?'

'Well, I'll punish Nobody for this, anyway,' muttered Polyphemus to himself. He tried groping around the cave for his enemies, but everyone, humans and satyrs alike, kept dodging out of his way, and once when he thought he'd caught the hairy leg of a satyr, it turned out to be a sheep who gave him a sharp kick. In the end he lay down again, unable to sleep, but groaning in pain until morning.

Eventually, Polyphemus heard the sound of birdsong through a crack in the cave roof, and he could hear the sheep bleating to be let out and graze. And now, he thought, this might be his chance – when he pulled the stone in from the entrance, he could crouch by the entrance and feel for the humans as they ran out. But, as he stretched out his hands, all he could feel going out of the cave were the woolly backs of his sheep: twenty-one rams and eighty-one ewes, all trotting out to feed as they usually did, even without the satyrs to shepherd them. He isn't any too bright, my nephew, and it didn't occur to him to feel _under_ the sheep, or he'd have realised there were humans or satyrs clinging underneath the biggest, hanging onto their wool with hands and feet or hands and hooves. It wasn't until the sheep were well away from the cave that he heard voices raised in argument.

'Aren't you going to take us with you?' pleaded Silenus. 'After all we've risked for you, especially all _I've_ risked – the way I gave you food, the way I showed the ogre how to drink, and nearly got raped by him for helping you – you're just going to abandon me and my sons to be eaten by him and the other giants? Is that fair?'

'Yes, it is,' said the man called Nobody. 'You're despicable, lying cowards who wouldn't lift a finger to save me and my friends, or to avenge those who've already been eaten. _You_, the father, lied and pretended I'd robbed you in order to save your own skin – _you_, his sons, didn't even try to protect your own father – as far as I'm concerned, the lot of you and the giants deserve each other. The only hoofed animals I'm taking with me are the juiciest of these sheep, and you can explain the loss of _them_ to your master. Goodbye!'

Polyphemus picked up a stone and hurled it in the vague direction of the voices. 'That's right!' he called. 'That's what comes of trusting Nobody!'

But the men must already have set sail, because Polyphemus heard their captain calling, over the splashing of the waves as his ship rowed out to sea: 'Who are you calling Nobody? I'm Odysseus, son of Laertes, and King of Ithaca!'

Perhaps he'd have done better to keep his mouth shut, because Polyphemus immediately knelt down and prayed, 'Father Poseidon, lord of the seas, please avenge what's happened to me. Don't ever let Odysseus and his men get home, but let them be all be shipwrecked and drowned. And please heal my eye, as well. Oh, and I'm sorry I said all that about not believing in gods. Amen.'

Well, I'm sure you've both grown up hearing the story of how long it took Odysseus to get home after that. Poseidon always has been better at causing trouble for sailors than at helping or healing anyone, but he did ask me to go and do what I could for my nephew. I couldn't restore Polyphemus's sight – there was scarcely any eyeball left to repair – but at least I could wash and bandage his wound, and tell him to live on a diet of milk and raw vegetables until he was healed, and avoid eating people, because they weren't good for an open wound. I tried asking the other cyclopes to nurse him, and to bring him food now that Odysseus had stolen his sheep, but they just said that if Polyphemus was stupid enough to let a human maim him, that was his problem.

In fact, in the end it was the satyrs who came back to look after Polyphemus, and who guided him around when he was feeling better, and taught him how to feel his way with a stick. You see, what Odysseus hadn't realised was that, while satyrs can be pretty cowardly and lazy, they are also much more soft-hearted than some humans, and they can't bear to see anyone suffering, even an enemy. I don't think they'd realised, until Odysseus came, just how lonely it was to be a cyclops, and how terrifying it was to be an injured cyclops with no friend to comfort him.

Besides, the satyrs had found out that, while a very drunk cyclops is even more terrifying than a sober one, a cyclops who's had just a bit to drink might start to be sociable, and even make jokes. There was still a lot of wine left in the wineskin, and, as I said, it was very heavily concentrated so that, when it was mixed with water, it went a long way. So the satyrs had an idea for Polyphemus to make a living even though he was disabled and had hardly any sheep left. They set up the first tavern on the island, with bay-leaves and oak-leaves over the mouth of the cave – it should have been vine-leaves, but there weren't any – and a sign saying _The Blind Drunk_, and then they explained to all the other cyclopes how they could come to Polyphemus's cave to trade food for a drink of this wonderful thing called _wine_.

They were starting to wonder what would happen when the wine ran out, when Silenus, who was out cutting fresh oak-leaves, saw another ship drawing up on the beach. And this time, the person stepping out of it was someone Silenus knew. He dropped his secateurs and his basket of leaves, and immediately ran down to the beach to hug his friend. 'Dionysus!' he exclaimed. 'You're looking well for a man who's been to Hell and back! How was it?'

Dionysus smiled. 'Oh, not too bad. I had a spot of bother at first, because I was disguised as Heracles, and they beat me for all the trouble Heracles had caused last time _he_ visited the Underworld. But when I managed to prove who I was, and that I just wanted a playwright, Hades said I was welcome to take either Aeschylus or Euripides, because ever since they'd died they'd done nothing but argue over which of them was a better writer, and nobody could get any peace. So, I've brought back Aeschylus! He's in Athens now, writing great trilogies of tragedies of revenge, honour, justice, and mercy: plays that will inspire a new generation of theatre-goers and make Athens great again!'

Silenus shrugged. 'Have they got dirty songs in them?'

'Well, not in the tragedies,' said Dionysus. '_But_ he's also writing plays about satyrs! So I've got a gig for you and the lads – as soon as he's finished writing the script, we can go back to Athens and start rehearsing.' (In fact, Dionysus had told Aeschylus to write a satyr-play before he started writing the tragedies, because he knew it took satyrs much longer than human actors to get organised and start learning their lines, and they'd never be ready in time otherwise.)

'Sounds good,' said Silenus, 'but until the script's ready, I think there's work for us to do right here. Do you realise, the poor benighted ogres who live on this island had never even _heard_ of wine until Odysseus brought some along last month? Is it any wonder they didn't have any kind of social life? We've made the most of what Odysseus gave us, but if you could make some vines grow for our host Polyphemus, and leave some of us on duty here to help him tend them, he could be in business for life.'

'That was a good story,' said Jack, when I'd finished, 'but you're an even bigger liar than I am. It didn't _really_ happen like that, did it?'

'Well, maybe Dionysus wasn't ransoming a playwright at the same time that the satyrs were Polyphemus's slaves and Odysseus was returning from the Trojan War,' I admitted. 'Come to think of it, that business with Aeschylus and Euripides must have been a few hundred years later. I can't remember where Dionysus had got to when the satyrs were on the island of the cyclopes.'

'I don't _mind_ you lying,' Jack reassured me. 'Only, if you're trying to reform me, you ought to be completely truthful about everything, in the hope that I'll somehow catch honesty off you. But I preferred the story the way you told it.'

'Some of these stories about Dionysus make him sound almost like Jesus,' said Arthur thoughtfully. 'Being a god, but the son of a human mother, and being persecuted, and descending into Hell in order to raise people to life. And Jesus turned water into wine, as well.'

'Yes – if Jesus had gone wrong, I suppose he might have ended up like Dionysus,' I said. 'But Dionysus was a nasty little thug some of the time. When his family refused to believe in him, he drove his aunts insane and made them murder his cousin. I can't imagine Jesus behaving like that, can you? Jesus was the true God, but he knew how to be a good man as well. Dionysus couldn't get the hang of being either, and so a lot of the time he was a wild, mixed-up demigod who did terrible things when he was out of his mind and couldn't control himself. I'd have done what I could to help him, just because he was suffering, but I don't think I could have loved him nearly so much if he hadn't been Silenus's friend.'


	10. Chapter 10

[told by Sir John]

I wish I could tell you of all the monsters and giants Arthur and I fought over the next few weeks, and how many times we saved each other's lives, and how many beautiful maidens we rescued. But you, gentle reader, would never believe me, and you'd be quite right. We didn't have any adventures, unless you count my struggle to keep walking, Arthur's battle with guilt, and Cheiron's efforts to look after us.

We did see several dragons, but only small ones the size of foxes, sunning themselves on the road, who scuttled into the undergrowth when they heard the clank of Arthur's armour and the thud of Cheiron's hooves. Once we came upon one that was sleeping too soundly to notice us, curled up with its spiny neck and tail woven around each other so that its snout was resting on its haunches and the bunch of spikes on its tail-tip were under its front paws. I drew my sword to stab it before it woke, but Arthur said, 'Leave it alone! It's not doing you any harm, is it?'

'But I thought knights were supposed to kill dragons,' I protested. 'And if I wasn't a very valiant knight back in my world, probably it was because there weren't any dragons left to fight by the fifteenth century, so, now I'm here, I ought to practise.' As I blustered on, my brain stood by incredulously, watching my mouth make a fool of itself. What if Arthur called my bluff by commanding me to fight a gigantic dragon that was awake, sixty feet long, and trying to fry me alive? Probably he knew that I'd just been trying to impress him with how brave I was, and now he thought me even more of a coward for offering to kill a sleeping foe.

'The big ones are nearly extinct even now, at least in this area,' said Arthur. 'There are some of the red ones left in Wales, but they mostly eat coal and sheep rather than maidens. And the biggest species – which was flightless, didn't breathe fire, and only ate trees – was hunted to extinction centuries ago by big-game hunters who couldn't tell one kind of dragon from another. But these little shimmering blue-green ones with the lacy black wings don't grow much bigger than this, and if they're in plain view, it's generally best to let them sleep. When you need to go into the bushes, though, it's a good idea to poke around the bracken with a stick – you might startle a sleeping dragon, but that's a lot better than accidentally treading on one. They can scorch your ankles quite nastily, if you're not careful.'

If the dragons didn't give us any trouble, the insects made up for it. The midges and mosquitoes bit us, but the clouds of gnats who followed us for miles on end were nearly as bad, flying into our eyes or up our noses or drowning themselves in anything we ate or drank. Admittedly, I'd been grumbling about the lack of meat, but I didn't think barley and gnat stew with midge tea was worth the additional protein. Cheiron, because he had two bodies and no clothes, suffered the most, swishing his tail at the horseflies around his hindquarters, while using his hands to waft the midges from his face, which left his withers and forelegs undefended.

The weather was growing hotter and we were constantly drenched in sweat, which encouraged the insects even more. Whenever we passed a spring or stream, Cheiron, whose centaur senses were sharper than ours, would decide whether the water was safe to drink fresh or only after boiling, and then, when we had drunk and refilled our water bottles, Cheiron and I poured water over ourselves. This didn't stop the insects scenting us, but did mean that, for the next quarter-hour or so, those who flew into us would drown in spring water rather than sticky sweat, which was probably a cleaner death. Arthur, who couldn't splash himself with water for fear of rusting his armour, kept wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, and said nothing.

We made very slow progress, especially in the first couple of weeks after I joined Arthur and Cheiron. They could have walked twenty miles a day, but I was struggling to cope with a third of that. We broke camp and set off early each morning, before it was too hot, and walked three or four miles, frequently stopping so that I could catch my breath, or sit down on a fallen tree, or ask, 'Have we got a very long way to go?' At this rate, by the time we'd found a comfortable place to lie down in the shade, and I was groaning in pain and barely able to take another step, and even Arthur had to admit that one or two of his bones were creaking a bit, it would be lunchtime, so we would collapse for a few minutes to recover our strength, then eat.

After lunch, we took a siesta that lasted all afternoon, and woke to walk a few more miles in the coolth of evening. Long before it was dark, we would decide we couldn't manage to go any further, so we found a campsite and pitched the tent, and Arthur and I took off our boots and checked each other's feet for blisters and Cheiron's hooves for stones. Then it was time to light a fire, cook dinner and eat it, and tell each other stories before retreating into our sleeping-bags. The next day, the whole thing happened all over again.

It was a life as routine-laden as a child's, complete with afternoon naps and bedtime stories. But then, when you are dropped into a different world, with no idea how things are done there, or what is or isn't dangerous, you are a child, depending on people who know their way around that world to teach you and protect you. Arthur and Cheiron were good foster-parents to me, and, after all, isn't it better to be loved like a child than hated and rejected like a man?

After a while, I began to notice that I was coping better with the journey. I wasn't getting out of breath as quickly, and by the end of the day I wasn't aching all over my body, but only in selected areas. Arthur seemed less anxious over whether I was going to survive, and, instead of fussing over whether I was feeling all right, would say casually, 'We've made a fair distance this morning,' or, 'It's good to be up on the high ground, isn't it? We've left the flies down by the stream.' And I'd look down at the meadow where we'd camped last night, and realise that a month ago I could never have attempted to climb a hill like that, and couldn't have squeezed through the kissing-gate at the edge of the meadow anyway.

Cheiron seemed pleased with my progress, but I was still his patient, and he continued to be very strict about what I wasn't allowed to eat or drink (again, it was like being back in the nursery). On Saturdays, we usually arranged to camp near a town or village with a church, so that we could go to church on Sunday. Before a church service, Arthur would explain quietly to the priest that, as a penance, he had taken a vow that he and his companions would not taste wine during this journey, so would it be all right if we were given only bread at Communion? This was a bit of a fib, but Arthur was hardly going to say, 'I don't trust this follower of mine not to swig down the entire chalice and demand a refill.'

Most priests agreed cheerfully. Some asked whether we'd like them to pray for us after the service for any problems we had. One admitted that he served beetroot juice instead of wine, as so many of his parishioners suffered from damaged livers, and that he hoped God didn't mind. And one, who evidently hadn't recognised King Arthur, told us that if we had so little faith, we should think about whether we ought to be taking Communion at all.

Arthur asked whether we could come in to hear the sermon, pray, and sing hymns, but stay in our pew during Communion, but Cheiron decided to help him. 'My friend has faith coming out of his ears,' he said, 'but he's doing this to give me moral support. You must have heard how centaurs go mad at the mere smell of wine, let alone the taste of it, and start attacking everyone and everything, and he wants to help me behave myself.'

'That's right,' I said, 'and I'm part satyr, so the same goes for me. I'm mostly human, but we mixed creatures have to be careful, you know.'

The priest frowned. 'Do you know why Christ was incarnate as a man born of woman?' he asked Arthur.

'Wasn't it to save us from our sins?' said Arthur.

'Exactly! To save men and women from their sins, because God made men and women in His own image. Not centaurs. Not satyrs. Not trolls or dwarves or hobgoblins. Those creatures don't have souls to save. If you're human, you can come in, but I'd rather you left your animals in the churchyard.'

Arthur blushed deeply, and glanced at me to see whether I was hurt. Seeing that I was on the verge of laughter rather than tears, he turned back to the priest and said, 'Thank you, but I don't think I could be responsible for my pets if I left them unattended. I'll take them back to their stable.' The three of us set off back towards the campsite, and tried to make sure we were out of earshot of the churchyard before bursting out laughing.

'"Leave your animals in the churchyard"!' repeated Cheiron. 'How did he know we weren't going to eat the flowers off the graves?'

'You quite often stay outside anyway, if the door's a bit low,' I pointed out.

'Yes, but then the priest brings the Communion bread out to me, after serving the crippled grannies in the back pew,' said Cheiron. 'Well, at three thousand years old, it's not surprising if I'm disabled!' He stamped his four chestnut legs, all gleaming with health and vigour.

'Anyway, if I haven't got a soul, I can't be held responsible for my actions,' I said. 'In which case, there are a few judges I could sue for false imprisonment.'

'Come on, Jack, we all know you've got a soul,' said Arthur.

'Yes, but it's worn through in places – needs cobbling back together,' I said.

'Oh well, if you hadn't admitted to being part satyr, the priest might have let us sit in for the first hymn before sending us off to Sunday school.'

'I dare you to go back and show him who you are!' I said. 'Be austere and terrible in majesty; tell that churlish priest you've made me Prime Minister and Cheiron Archbishop of Canterbury, and then let us demand to know what he has to say for himself. And then we'll put him in the stocks in a dungeon overnight, and in the morning – or in two or three days, if we feel like it – we can decide to be very magnanimous and let him go, but only if he kisses Cheiron's hooves.'

'Oh, don't be daft!' said Arthur, laughing. 'What kind of a king would I be, if I used my power to bully anyone who was rude to me?'

'You're not a king, you're a Monarch, because you're amused,' I said. 'In my world, anyone who was crowned king or queen immediately had to vow to be Good but Not Amused. So it was a pig of a job to force on anyone who'd had a sense of humour before he was king, because the only people having any fun were the ones having slanging matches in scruffy pubs. I used to have a really cool friend called Hal who just happened to be the King's oldest son, and his father didn't approve of me – partly because he thought I was a bad influence because I was older than Hal and because I drank too much and because I was a thief, but those weren't reasons, they were just excuses. Hal's dad didn't disapprove of his having disreputable friends, he just disapproved of his having friends, full stop. Every time Hal went home, he got the full nag: "Don't you realise that if you have a social life like a normal teenager, people will think you _are_ a normal person, and then they won't be impressed with you, just the way they weren't with the king before me, which was why I was able to get rid of him, but you've had it soft, why can't you be a self-made man like me, what have I done to be landed with a wastrel like you for a son, what wouldn't I give to find out that you weren't my son after all, oh I know you're just waiting for me to drop dead so you can have things all your own way, and why is it that you seem to prefer being anywhere else rather than at home?"'

'We dads always get things wrong,' said Arthur. 'Obviously, I've been a much worse father to Mordred than your friend's father was to him, but sometimes I think there isn't a right way to be a parent, just a very wide choice of wrong ways. I know I was much luckier in my own childhood, because I was placed with a foster family, and no-one except Merlyn knew that I was the heir. I just assumed that I was going to spend my life being squire to Sir Kay, and if we couldn't be as close friends when I was his squire as when we'd just been brothers playing and fighting and getting into mischief together, at least I could still love him and serve him.'

'Why were you with a foster family, though?' I asked. 'Were your own parents that bad?'

'My father was. You see, my own birth is much worse than Mordred's. He's illegitimate, and the result of incest, but I was the result of rape. My father, King Uther Pendragon, made war against the Earl and Countess of Cornwall, murdered the Earl of Cornwall and raped his wife, the Countess Igraine, who gave birth to me. Well, having me to look after must have reminded her of everything she'd suffered, and she couldn't bear it, so Merlyn took me away, and so Sir Ector and his wife looked after me along with their little boy, Kay.

'And then, of course, when we were a bit bigger and Sir Ector was starting to worry about finding a school for us, Merlyn came back to be our tutor, but he protected me from knowing who I was. So he couldn't tell me that the Countess Igraine's three daughters, Morgan Le Fay, Elaine, and Morgause, were my half-sisters. And they were all much older than me, anyway, so that it didn't occur to me that they might be my sisters. Morgause's four older sons – Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, and Gareth – are only a few years younger than I am, and then there's about an eleven-year gap, and then – well, I met Morgause, when I was eighteen and had just defeated her husband, King Lot of Orkney, and she'd come to visit me to ask me to be merciful to him. I don't think I was quite as wicked _then_ as my father – at least I didn't kill King Lot or rape Morgause – but somehow we wound up sleeping together anyway, and Morgause gave birth to Mordred, and I turned out to be far more evil than my father, when I drowned an entire ship-load of innocent children just to try to kill my own son. I don't see how I can ever put things right, after that. Were your friend and his father ever reconciled, do you know?'

'I don't want to talk about them for now,' I said. 'Can't you tell me a cheerful story instead? One that isn't full of death and guilt?'

'I'll try. Have you read the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?'

'Not exactly.' There had been a poem about Sir Gawain published in my time, and the reviews had said that, with so many modern poets like Chaucer indulging the fad for rhymed poetry, it was refreshing to see the Pearl Poet reviving English alliterative epic in a work which would still be being read when crowd-pleasers like _The Canterbury Tales_ were long forgotten. Which seemed fairly clear reviewer-speak for 'It's unreadable.' But Arthur was beginning his version...


	11. Chapter 11

[told by Arthur]

This story goes back a good many years, to when I'd recently got married to Guinevere, and we were sitting around the Round Table on New Year's Eve, with the knights who'd come to join me at Camelot. This was in the early days, and many of the heroes you'll have heard of, like Sir Galahad and Sir Percival, weren't even born yet. When I'd got started, my court had mainly consisted of Sir Kay and Merlyn and me, and some of our old friends like King Pellinore, but now knights were starting to come from all over Europe to join the Order of the Round Table and fight for justice against the rule of brute force. Sir Lancelot had come from France, and three of my nephews from Orkney: Sir Gawain and Sir Agravain, who were nineteen and eighteen and had only just been knighted, plus their next brother, Gaheris, who was serving as Gawain's squire. I wished Gareth, the fourth brother, could have been celebrating Hogmanay with us as well, but he'd decided to stay home for a few years longer, so that he could look after his little brother Mordred, because my sister Morgause seemed to have lost interest in the baby as soon as he was weaned. It must have been hard for Gareth, because the older four boys had been very close, but that was why he couldn't bear to think of Mordred growing up not knowing any of his brothers.

Anyway, it was New Year's Eve, and the servants had brought us a beautiful dinner, but I was too restless to eat anything. We'd been doing nothing since Christmas but eat and drink, dance and play games, and tell stories and sing songs, and it had all been great fun, but after a week of it, I wanted more than fun. I wanted adventure; I wanted a challenge; I wanted to see what the next year was going to bring. In other words, I was an idiot who didn't know when I was well off.

Well, while I was sitting there, so impatient that I could barely sit still, and the main course was being cleared away and Guinevere was asking me if I wanted to save the leftover vegetables for bubble-and-squeak tomorrow, suddenly a huge man on a huge horse rode into the middle of the hall. He was as big as a troll, but most of the trolls I'd met were made of granite or limestone, whereas this one shone as though he'd been carved out of a giant emerald. He was bright green all over, wearing a green fur robe and green jewellery, and sitting on a vast green charger with a green saddle and enamelled green stirrups, and carrying a holly bough in one hand and a ferocious green axe in the other.

The strange thing was that he didn't look rough and wild exactly, the way a troll or a giant does, but he didn't look quite like a gentleman either. His green riding-breeches were beautifully tailored and obviously made of expensive cloth, but his green feet were bare. His huge green beard and his long green hair hung down to his elbows and were as thick as an evergreen shrub, but they were carefully combed and neatly trimmed. He wasn't wearing any armour, and, with all his gold and emerald jewellery, and the intricate gold embroidery on his green velvet coat under the fur robe, and the way he'd plaited his horse's green mane with dozens of fine gold wires, he almost looked a bit of a dandy. And yet he was armed with the biggest, grimmest battle-axe I'd ever seen, but even the axe-handle was decorated with pretty patterns and inlaid with gold.

For a few minutes we were too awestruck to speak, but eventually I found my voice and said, 'Happy New Year! Are you joining us for dinner?'

The Green Knight stared down at me, and said, 'No, that is not my purpose. And yet I do not come in war either, but merely to play a game with one of the knights here. If any man dares, he may strike me one blow as hard as he can, with my own axe. But after that, he must come to me in a year and a day, and I will strike him one blow in return. Does any accept my challenge?'

I said, 'Are you sure you wouldn't rather sit down and have a drink? Nobody wants to celebrate the New Year with mindless violence.' But when the Green Knight laughed at me and said we were all cowards, I was furious, and stood up and said, 'Well, if that's the way you want it, give me the axe!' So the Green Knight handed it to me, and dismounted and knelt on the floor so that I could reach his neck more easily, and kept on smiling as if to say, 'Come on, let's see what you can do!'

But at this point, Gawain said, 'Excuse me, but would you mind if I answered our visitor's challenge? Only you're the King, so you're too valuable to risk, but I'm expendable – after all, everyone knows I'm only here because I'm your nephew!'

He was joking, of course – he knew perfectly well that I don't think anyone is expendable – but now Kay was standing up as well, pale and trembling but saying, 'Why can't _I_ fight the troll? I'm not having people say I'm only here because I'm your foster-brother!'

I said, 'Well, we can't all take him on in single combat! Let Gawain have a go.'

So Gawain took hold of the axe, but before he raised it, he asked, 'Sir, will you tell me your name and where you live? Otherwise, it's going to be a bit difficult to come to your house for the return match.'

But the Green Knight said, 'Just get on with it! If I live, I'll tell you after you've struck me, and if you kill me now, you won't need to find me next year, will you? Now come on, unless you're afraid!' And he bowed his head and lifted up all his long green hair to expose the back of his neck, and Gawain chopped off his head with a single blow. It rolled several yards across the hall, leaving a trail of bright red drops of blood looking like holly-berries against the green skin, and then the Green Knight groped his way over to it, picked it up by the hair, and said, 'Not bad, for a beginner.' He dangled his head until it was level with Gawain, and said, 'See you in a year and a day. Just ask for the Knight of the Green Chapel.'

Gawain said, 'Do you want me to bring the axe back?'

But the Green Knight said, 'No, keep it as a present. I've got plenty more.' And he jumped back on his horse and rode off, with the holly-branch in one hand and his head in the other. We stared down at the muddy hoof-prints and the trail of blood on the floor, and then Guinevere said, 'Well, we've had an adventure; _now_ do you want your dinner?'

Gawain was all for setting off on his quest after Easter, but Guinevere and I managed to persuade him to stay for most of the year. We knew he probably wouldn't survive this quest, so we wanted to him to enjoy one more spring, one more summer, and then one more harvest-time, with us in peace. I was ashamed of myself for throwing away my friend's life, not for some worthwhile cause but in a silly party game, but Gawain said that there was nothing silly about keeping his word, and that he would be nothing at all if he broke his promise. In the end, he decided to stay with us until Halloween and ride out on All Saints' Day, to give himself two months. He was very insistent that he had to meet his fate alone, with only his horse Gringolet for company; no-one, not even Agravain or Gaheris, was allowed to ride with him.

Before he left, Guinevere and I decided to give him an early Christmas present. Up till then, Gawain had borne a shield with the same emblem as all his clan, a thistle, to show that the men of Orkney were tough and prickly and that no-one laid a hand on them without regretting it, and that, even if they were cut down, they'd keep coming back. But we thought he deserved a nobler symbol now, and so we had a new shield made for him, red with a golden five-point star.

Agravain suggested having a picture of the Virgin Mary painted on the inside, because she was Gawain's favourite saint. Gawain had explained to me that when he felt afraid, he thought of how frightened Mary must have been when the angel told her she was pregnant, and she knew that Joseph might abandon her and she might have to undergo trial by ordeal and then be stoned to death, but how she was still brave and proud to be the mother of the Messiah. And, Gawain said, if a young lass like Mary could conquer her fear, so could he.

Guinevere made up a poem for when we presented the new shield to Gawain, explaining why the five-point star suited him. It went something like this:

For firstly he was firm in his five fingers.

For secondly he was sharp in his five senses.

For thirdly he trusted in the Five Wounds of Christ.

For fourthly he rejoiced in the Five Joys of Mary.

For fifthly he was full of faithfulness and friendliness, courage and courtesy and self-control.

When Guinevere read this to Gawain, he blushed and said, 'But that makes it sound as though I'm better than other people! I mean, it's very kind of you, but I can't go round showing off like this!'

Guinevere kissed him and said, 'Sweetest nephew, it's all true – well, except maybe the bit about courtesy! Don't you know that if a lady offers you a present, whatever it is, it's a point of courtesy to accept it graciously?'

Gawain said, 'What: _any_ present?' and Guinevere said, 'Yes: absolutely anything. And if a lady asks you to do anything for you, you are honour-bound to do it, just as if the Virgin Mary herself had asked you.'

We should have remembered how literal Gawain could be about blanket statements like that.


	12. Chapter 12

[Arthur continues]

So Gawain rode on alone through November and December, asking everyone he met if they'd seen the Green Knight, or if they knew where the Green Chapel was. But nobody seemed to have noticed a green giant on a green horse – and after all, you'd think they'd remember if they had seen him!

Gawain wondered if the Green Knight had been a troll or some kind of very tall elf, so he decided to search Wales and then the North-West of England, where he might find trolls or ogres who might know something. The trouble was that the trolls and ogres only wanted to fight, not talk, and so did the dragons, not to mention hungry bears, and packs of wolves desperate with hunger from the hardest winter in years.

But it was the winter itself that was the real problem. Gawain wasn't camping the way we are, with a tent and sleeping-bag; most nights he just lay down in his armour on the freezing ground, so that he'd be ready to fight if anything tried to eat him while he slept. He was glad if he just found a sheltered place between rocks where he was out of the snow and sleet, and then he had to hope the rocks wouldn't wake up at night and turn out to be trolls.

When it came to Christmas Eve, he still hadn't heard any news of the Knight of the Green Chapel, and it was weeks since he'd seen _any_ church or chapel, even one with a wriggly tin roof. Gawain wasn't as obsessive about going to church and doing penance as some knights, like Galahad – after all, he knew God was everywhere, and he said going on a quest in December was quite enough of a penance without needing to wear a hair-shirt under his armour. But all the same, it _was_ Christmas, and he wished he could be in a church full of candlelight and the sound of carol-singing and the smell of fruit from the Christingles, instead of riding over the cold hillside in the dusk. It was too gloomy to see the picture of Mary on the inside of his shield, but he looked up to the sky where the first stars were shining, and he prayed:

'Mother Mary, I know it's cheeky to ask for this, when you had to give birth in a barn or a cave, or maybe even in an open field. But please, if you're willing, can you help me find my way to somewhere with a church or a chapel in time for Midnight Mass? And if not, please help me not to mind being homeless at Christmas, like you. Amen.'

It seemed as though Mary was willing, because before long, Gawain came to the castle of a knight called Sir Bertilak de Hautdesert. The drawbridge was hauled up, of course, but when Gawain called to the porter to ask for shelter, the servants immediately wound it down to let him in, and grooms came to lead Gringolet to a stable and rub him down. Then Sir Bertilak himself came to welcome Gawain and show him to the best spare bedroom, where a fire was already burning in the grate. He called his servants to bring in a bathtub and fill it with pitchers of hot water, and to lay out big fluffy towels, and bring several sets of rich robes so that their guest had a choice of what to change into once he'd had a good long soak. By the time they'd sorted all that out, and taken Gawain's armour off him – which took a while, because he was too stiff with cold to help much – and carried the clothes he'd been wearing since the start of November to the castle laundry, the bath was full, and Gawain climbed in and lay back until he'd stopped shivering.

When he was dry and dressed in fresh clothes, a servant brought him his dinner on a tray – it was salmon en croute, and the most delicious meal that Gawain had ever tasted – and Sir Bertilak came back to sit with him while he ate. 'You're very welcome to my castle,' he said. 'Sorry it's only fish pie for dinner, but then it _is_ Friday, after all!'

Gawain, who had eaten the last crust of stale bread from his saddlebag that morning, laughed with relief and said, 'This is the sort of penance I can live with!' Sir Bertilak asked him whether he'd come far, and what brought him on such a hard journey at this time of year, and Gawain explained who he was, and how he'd come from Camelot seeking the Knight of the Green Chapel, and now, with only a week to go, was no nearer to finding him...

But Sir Bertilak said, 'Oh, I know where the Green Chapel is; you'll find your way there, don't worry. But in the meantime, Sir Gawain of Orkney, I've heard such a lot about you, and it'd be a great honour if you'd stay and celebrate Christmas with us. I'm sure my wife will enjoy meeting you, too. Talking of Christmas, it's nearly time for Midnight Mass now. Are you all right to come down to the castle chapel, or do you need to rest?'

Gawain had been struggling not to yawn, but now he remembered that this was why he'd been so keen to come to some shelter tonight. So he came down to the chapel where all of Sir Bertilak's household and guests were assembled, and they listened to the Gospel stories about Jesus's birth, and the prophecies in Isaiah, and sang carols – including Gawain's favourite, the one that goes, '_Holly! Holly! And the first tree in the greenwood, it was the holly!_' – and took Communion.

Afterwards, they had mince pies and mulled wine, and Gawain was introduced to everyone in the castle, including Sir Bertilak's wife, Lady Hautdesert, who was a good few years younger than her husband and very beautiful, and an old woman whose name Gawain didn't quite catch, possibly because he was still looking at Lady Hautdesert. The old woman was dressed in black from head to foot except for the white cloth around her chin, like a nun, but Gawain thought she looked more like a witch, and felt rather afraid. Even though he knew his own mother, Morgause, was a witch, that didn't reassure him much, because he'd always been rather afraid of his mother, too. But on the other hand, Morgause was beautiful, whereas this one was hideous and scowling. Gawain couldn't work out whether she was a relative of Sir Bertilak or of his wife, but Sir Bertilak seemed to spend a lot of his time with her, and always sat next to her at meals, leaving his wife to sit with Gawain.

For the next few days, there was such thick snow that nobody could leave the castle, so Sir Bertilak and his household and all their guests took it in turns to invent games. Gawain decided to make the most of it, because he knew this could well be the last party he would ever attend. He tried not to be bitter about the fact that last year's celebrations had led him to seek his death this year, but just to be glad that he was spending his last few days with a generous host who showered him with kindness, and a beautiful woman who couldn't be a threat to his virtue because she was already married. He tried to remember to say his prayers every night before bed – which wasn't easy, as he didn't usually get to bed until the small hours of the morning – and to ask God to look after Agravain and Gaheris at Camelot, and Gareth and Mordred on Orkney, when he wouldn't be around much longer.

But whatever he tried to pray, what went through his head was the song about the holly. '_Now the holly bears a berry as green as the grass,/ And Mary she bore Jesus who died on the cross.'_ Being crucified must hurt a lot more than being beheaded, but that didn't make being beheaded any easier to face. _'Now the holly bears a berry as bitter as gall,/ And Mary she bore Jesus who died for us all.'_ And in a way, Gawain was about to die for me, because he'd accepted the challenge instead of me, but really he was about to die because we'd both been so keen to join in a pointless contest rather than be called cowards. _'Now the holly bears a berry, as blood it is red,/ And Mary she bore Jesus who rose from the dead./ And Mary she bore Jesus, our saviour for to be,/ And the first tree in the greenwood it was the holly._' And Gawain would have to trust Jesus to raise him from the dead, but right now, the only one who kept rising again was the Green Knight.

By the twenty-eighth of December, the snow had thawed enough for all the visitors to set off home, though not the old woman, who seemed to be a permanent fixture in Sir Bertilak's household. Gawain was all set to head off as well, in search of the Green Chapel, but Sir Bertilak said it was only a couple of miles from his castle, and Gawain was more than welcome to stay until New Year's Day and ride out in the morning. 'But,' he said, 'I must ask you to do one thing in return.'

Gawain said, 'Yes, I promise: I'll do whatever you command.'

So Sir Bertilak said, 'I command you to have a rest. You've had a long, hard journey, and since you've been here I've kept you up late at night, talking and drinking and playing games, when you should have been catching up on your sleep. Now, tomorrow morning _I_ intend to go hunting, but I want _you_ to have a good lie-in and not get up until you feel like it, and have a peaceful day; I'll ask my wife to keep you company and make sure you don't get too bored. We'll repeat this for three days, and after that, you should be fresh enough to withstand this Green Knight you've told me about. Oh, and one more thing: if I catch anything when I'm hunting, I'll present it to you on my return, and if you've won anything in the castle, you're to give it to me in exchange. Is that a fair deal?'

So, the next morning, that was what they did. Gawain surfaced briefly just before dawn, when he could hear the horses neighing and the hounds barking in the courtyard below, and he parted the curtains around his four-poster bed and glanced out at the window, he could see the sky rippled with pink bars. He waited until he saw the blazing red sun roll over the horizon, and heard the blast of Sir Bertilak's hunting horn, and then he kept his promise and went back to sleep.

When he woke again, it was broad daylight, and he felt comfortably warm and drowsy and happy to stay in bed. As he was lying back and gazing up at the paint swirls on the ceiling, he heard someone softly opening the bedroom door. He glanced between the curtains to see who it was, but, as it was Lady Hautdesert, coming in with a cup of tea on a tray and looking as if she was trying not to disturb him, he rolled over, pulled the blankets over his head, and pretended to be fast asleep. The lady put the tray down on the bedside table, and then parted the curtains and sat down on the side of the bed, and when there was no response from Gawain (who was secretly making the Sign of the Cross under the bedclothes, to protect himself from temptation), she pinned him down with her arms on both sides of the bedclothes.

'So, Sir Gawain of Orkney, do you yield to me?' she asked. 'Confess it: you are pinioned and cannot rise; these curtains shall be your dungeon, this blanket your fetters, and you shall not stir unless you pay me my ransom.'

Gawain said, 'Sweet lady, I surrender at once and beg your mercy, but will you give me leave to sit up? I can't plead very well with my head under the blankets.'

So the lady let him sit up, and said, 'Sweet knight, as you yield to me, so I will yield to you. My husband has left everything in the house at your disposal, and all I can give you that he has not is my body. Oh, Gawain, do you know how much I've longed for this moment? I'd heard so much about how brave and honourable and courteous you were, and I'd always longed to meet you. And now, in the five days since we've met, I've seen that you were nobler and sweeter and more handsome than anyone ever told me, and much more besides, but I never had the chance to be alone with you until now. So, please, don't scorn me when I tell you that, if a thousand valiant knights and princes and kings were all clamouring to be my husband, I'd choose you over all of them.'

Gawain said, 'Well, thank you, but I think you've got a much better husband already. But, as you've taken me prisoner, I will be your servant, and obey any of your commands, once I've paid my ransom to be allowed out of bed. What ransom shall I pay you?'

'Only this,' she said: 'that I might have one kiss with the great Sir Gawain.'

So they kissed, and then the lady said, 'Would you like breakfast in bed?'

But Gawain said, 'No, really, it's all right: I'll come down to the dining-room.'


	13. Chapter 13

Arthur continues]

So the lady left him in peace, and Gawain got up and dressed and said his prayers and came down to join Lady Hautdesert and the old crone in black for a late breakfast. He spent the day with them, and for once he was quite relieved to have the old woman as a chaperone, as she kept him busy answering questions about his parents and his brothers, and whether his mother was still beautiful. The lady of the castle sat by, embroidering a green silk scarf in gold thread with the words '_Honi soit qui mal y pense_,' and listening to their conversation.

When Sir Bertilak and his companions came home that evening, they brought dozens of splendid deer into the hall and laid them at Gawain's feet. 'You've had a good day's hunting,' said Gawain, 'and I'll surrender my catch in return,' and with that he kissed Sir Bertilak, who laughed and said, 'Well, that's a dear prize to give up, if the giver was dear to you. Do you think you ought to tell me where you won it?'

Gawain shook his head firmly. 'That wasn't part of the agreement. After all, I didn't ask you where you went hunting, did I?' So Sir Bertilak agreed not to question him, as long as they could play the same game tomorrow.

The next morning, when Lady Hautdesert came into Gawain's room, she kissed him as soon as he woke, and said, 'Oh, my dearest Gawain, thank you for protecting my honour yesterday, by not telling who it was that kissed you! I'm sorry for loving you so much, when I should have realised that you must have a lover far more beautiful and nobler than I am. After all, you could hardly be so valiant if you didn't have some lady to inspire you to mighty deeds, could you?'

Gawain said, 'Well, I don't have a girlfriend at the moment, but the lady who teaches me courage is the saint on this shield, and I pray that she'll teach both of us self-control as well.'

Lady Hautdesert trembled her lower lip and said, 'So, you don't have a partner, but you can't love me, even when I'm dying of love for you? You hold my heart in your hand; do you want to crush it utterly?'

Gawain said, 'I love you as I love your husband. The two of you have been the kindest of hosts to me since I arrived, and I won't repay your generosity by destroying your marriage. Now, if I have permission to get up and get dressed, I'll come and sit with you and your friend until your husband comes back. Is that better than nothing?'

The lady said, 'There's a price to pay,' and with that she kissed Gawain for the second time that morning, and left him in peace. He came down and spent the day with the two women as before, and Lady Hautdesert went on with her embroidery as they talked. She had finished the motto now, and was sewing pictures all around it: sprigs of holly, and the rising sun, and a hunter who looked like Sir Bertilak drawing a longbow below the writing, and a stag leaping above it.

When Sir Bertilak came in, he was soaked to the skin up to his chest, as he'd spent the day hunting a ferocious wild boar, and hadn't been able to kill it until he'd cornered the beast between the rocks in a deep river. His teeth were chattering, but he wouldn't rest until he had laid the giant boar at Gawain's feet, and so Gawain kissed him twice in exchange.

'You're getting good at this game,' said Sir Bertilak. 'Someone in the castle doesn't find you a bore! But remember: it's not over until we've played the third round.'

Gawain slept uneasily that night, but he slept long, dreaming confused dreams about green axe-men and deer-hunts and Mary being told that her beloved son would be a spear to pierce her own heart. So this time he really was still asleep, but muttering and crying out in his nightmares, when the lady came in to wake him with a kiss. 'There, dearest hart,' she said, 'the hunters won't shoot you! Gawain, you're safe here!'

'Am I?' asked Gawain. 'I'm not sure my virtue's safe.'

'Oh, I'm sorry about tempting you yesterday!' said the lady. 'Here, let me kiss you again to make it better! I've just come to say goodbye, in case I don't see you before you go off tomorrow, and to give you a present to take with you in memory of one who loved you.' And with that she held out the embroidered silk scarf.

'It's beautiful, but I can't take your embroidery!' said Gawain. 'Your husband's seen you working on it, so when I passed it on to him, he'd know that you'd given it to me.'

'No, you mustn't give it to Bertilak!' said the lady. 'I've been finishing it off ever since he rode out this morning, and now it's yours and only yours.' She showed it to Gawain, and he saw that now the leaping stag had a five-point star stitched on his breast, like the star on Gawain's shield. 'You see,' the lady said, 'the stitches are so tight that if I unpicked them now, they'd tear the picture of the hart to shreds, just as you'll tear my heart if you refuse to take my present. And besides, I made it to save your life!' Gawain must have looked puzzled at this, and so she went on: 'you see, my companion is a witch, and she loves you nearly as deeply as I do, so she's taught me to stitch a magic spell into my embroidery to protect you from the Green Knight. If you wear this scarf tied around you – it needn't be round your neck, it could be round your waist or looped under one arm or wherever you like – then nobody will be able to wound you. I'm sure you're not a coward, and I know you'd face death bravely for your own sake, but will you save your life for my sake? Then, if I don't see you again, at least I'll know that you've gone home to Camelot, happy and unhurt, instead of lying in pieces on the snowy hillside.'

So Gawain promised to tie the silk around his waist at once, before he got dressed, and the lady gave him a third kiss and left him to do that. But today, before he went down to join the two enchantresses, Gawain went to the castle priest to make confession. He wasn't entirely sure the scarf would work, so he decided he'd better make sure he was in a state of grace in case he died tomorrow, and confessed every sin he could remember ever having committed, going right back to the time as a child when he and his brothers had killed a unicorn. But he didn't say anything about the scarf he wasn't going to hand over to Sir Bertilak, because he couldn't without betraying Lady Hautdesert's confidence. He hoped that lying about a silk scarf wasn't a very big sin.

It was long dark when Sir Bertilak came in, with nothing to show for his day's hunting but a rather mangy fox-skin. When Gawain gave him three kisses, he said, 'You cunning fox, you're getting richer every time I catch less! You didn't catch anything else, did you?'

'No, but the kisses are more wealth than any man could crave,' said Gawain. 'And I'll remember them when I ride out tomorrow, but now I'd like to say goodbye to everyone in the castle, and thank each of you for looking after me so well.' And so he went round and thanked everyone, first Sir Bertilak, and his wife, and the old woman, and then the servants who had brought him meals and washed his clothes and the grooms who had looked after Gringolet, and then all the people he hadn't had much contact with but he knew they had important work to do, and then Sir Bertilak and his wife again. And when they'd rung in the New Year and sung 'Auld Lang Syne', Gawain went to up to his four-poster bed for the last time, and wondered whether he'd spend the next night sleeping in his armour on the journey home, or sleeping in the earth until Doomsday. He tried to make the most of having a soft bed while it lasted, but he didn't fall asleep until just before dawn, when a servant came to wake him.

It had snowed again, very deeply, and the clouds were gathering ashen-white to drop another load any time soon. Gawain got dressed, with the green scarf carefully tucked inside his shirt, and put his armour on, and went downstairs (trying not to clank too much, in case Sir Bertilak and his wife were still asleep) to where a groom had brought Gringolet out for him. The groom walked beside him through the forest to guide him most of the way to the Green Chapel, 'But, brave Sir Gawain,' he said, 'are you sure you really want to go there? I've heard of this Green Knight, even caught sight of him a couple of times, and he's a fearsome monster, as big as a troll and absolutely pitiless. He kills everyone who passes that way – knights or civilians, men or women, even monks and priests. So, sir, if you promise to ride home to Camelot some other way, I'll go back and tell my master how bravely you faced the Green Knight and overcame him.'

Gawain smiled and said, 'It's very kind of you, but it's no good letting everyone think I'm a hero if I know I'm a coward. I've promised the Green Knight I'll face him, so I will. But if you just point me to where the Green Chapel is, you're welcome to go home to your master, and thank him from me for all his kindness.'

So the groom pointed to a track running down to the bottom of a valley, and then turned and hurried back to Sir Bertilak's castle, and Gawain rode on alone. The trees came to an end, and the path opened onto a bare hillside with nothing but snow, and craggy boulders, and a burial mound that might have been the tomb of some ancient king, standing by a brook which swirled and bubbled as if it was boiling.

There was no sign of a building anywhere, not even a hut with a wriggly tin roof. Gawain was beginning to wonder if the groom had deliberately sent him on the wrong road to try and save his life, when he heard the sound of an axe being sharpened on the rocks above the mound, and it occurred to him that this mound _was_ the Green Chapel. He'd been expecting a Christian chapel, but, of course, this was the sort of place where a primeval monster like the Green Knight would worship. So he called up, in the direction of the noise, 'I'm ready when you are!'

The Green Knight came down the hillside to meet him, looking exactly the same as he had last year, except that his head was back on his neck (without any sign of a scar, so the wound must have healed very neatly) and that he was on foot now, still barefoot in the deep snow, and with a brand-new axe. 'You're welcome to the Green Chapel,' he said, 'but don't you know you should take your helmet off in a holy place? Come on, I haven't got all day!'

So, Gawain took his helmet off, put down his shield, and stretched his neck out, but, as the Green Knight swung the axe at him, he flinched. 'And you're supposed to be the valiant Sir Gawain!' snorted the Green Knight. 'I never flinched when you cut my head off, did I?'

Gawain said, 'No, but then I can't stick mine back on my shoulders, can I? All right, try again, and I'll keep still this time.'

And he stood as still as a stone, while the Green Knight swung the tremendous axe at him, terribly fast – and stopped short, just a sixteenth of an inch from Gawain's skin. 'Now you're getting the hang of it,' the Green Knight said. 'Practice makes perfect.'

Gawain said, 'Well, are you going to play with me all day? You were the one who said you were in a hurry!'

So this time, the Green Knight swung the blade in earnest, just enough to cut the skin on the side of Gawain's neck without damaging anything vital. Gawain didn't even feel the wound for a moment, because he was so surprised to be still alive, but when he saw his blood spattering the snow, he drew his sword, and said, 'There, we've done! A blow for a blow, as agreed, and all debts paid. And if you dare strike me again, I'll fight you!'

'Oh, I'm not going to strike again,' said the Green Knight – except that he wasn't green any more, or quite so huge, and in fact, had turned back into Sir Bertilak de Hautdesert. 'But if it's a matter of paying debts, I think you still owe me a green silk scarf.'


	14. Chapter 14

[King Arthur concludes]

Gawain opened and shut his mouth a couple of times without managing to say anything, and Sir Bertilak went on: 'I'd asked my wife to flirt with you, to test your virtue. The first evening, and the second evening, you paid me the kisses she'd given you, so I spared you twice. The third evening, you paid me the kisses but not the scarf, and now you've been punished for it.'

Gawain stared at the ground, where his shield was lying with the gold star facing him. 'I've been a bit of an idiot, haven't I?' he mumbled. 'It's my fault, for being vain enough to think your wife was in love with me – as if any woman would want me, when I'm a knave and a fool and a coward and a cheat, and an idler who loafs around in bed while you're out fighting wild boars, and a...'

He'd have gone on calling himself every bad name he could think of, but Sir Bertilak said, 'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world! I forgive you, and you're welcome to keep the scarf. It isn't really a magic one, as you've probably worked out, but it's pretty, after all. Now, come back to my castle and sit by the fire and have some lunch, and you're welcome to stay with us through the winter and go home when the weather clears up, and we'll be your friends now and never test you or play tricks on you again.'

Gawain found his voice and asked, 'Was everyone in on this? The groom who showed me the way here – was he really afraid of the Green Knight, or just acting?'

Sir Bertilak shook his head. 'No, I've let the Green Knight be seen a couple of times around here, and word gets around. But if you come home with me, I'll tell everyone how you I saw you withstand the Green Knight even when he wounded you, and how he'll never trouble us again. Your aunt's going to be disappointed – she wanted to keep the game going a bit longer – but I think it's time we called it a day.'

'My _aunt_?' repeated Gawain.

'Yes, the old lady in black – didn't I tell you that was your aunt, Morgan Le Fay? She's a fine woman in many ways, but she's never quite accepted your Uncle Arthur being king – her little brother getting ideas above his station and all that. So, when we'd been arguing about whether King Arthur and his knights were really as brave as everyone said, I agreed to let her turn me into the most terrifying shape she could, and send me to Camelot to see how people reacted. Well, you passed the first test. And when I came home and told your Aunt Morgan how you and King Arthur and Sir Kay had all been willing to fight me, and how you'd chopped my head off, she still said you wouldn't dare come to meet me here. Well, when you arrived at my castle asking for directions to the Green Chapel, it was obvious that you were going to pass the second test. So then, my wife suggested a third test...'

'All right, all right, I know I failed it!' said Gawain. 'But what chance did I have, with women conspiring against me? If Adam was led astray by Eve, and Sampson by Delilah, and David by Bathsheba, and the wise Solomon by seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, how could poor Gawain of Orkney do any better? Well, you can give my regards to your wife and my aunt, and say Happy New Year to them, but I'm not going back to face them again!' And with that, he picked up his helmet and his shield, jumped onto Gringolet's back, and rode off alone through the snow. The cut on his neck was starting to sting in the cold air, so he pulled out the silk scarf and used it as a bandage. The embroidered parts itched a bit, but he thought he probably deserved it.

It was Shrove Tuesday when Gawain arrived back at Camelot. The servants were bringing in mounds of pancakes, but, again, I couldn't bear to eat – not because I was too excited, but because I was too miserable at having lost my nephew. So when Gawain came in, Guinevere and I ran to hug him, but he knelt on the floor and wouldn't even meet our eyes, and announced, 'I've come back here to be banished, because if I didn't come back you'd think I'd died bravely, and I didn't.'

Of course, we asked what he meant, and Gawain muttered the whole story to the floor, and took off his helmet to show us the scar on his neck. It was a very faint line that was barely even visible, and he had plenty of much more noticeable scars from various fights, but of course this was different, because this was the mark of punishment, and, as far as Gawain was concerned, he might as well have had the words 'PROMISE-BREAKER' in flashing red lights on his forehead. And he showed us the green scarf which, he said, he was bound to wear for the rest of his life as a sign of disgrace.

By the time he'd finished the story, everyone was laughing; we couldn't help it, when Gawain was behaving as if such a trivial failure was the crime of the century. I asked Guinevere for the scarf she was wearing – a fluffy pink one – and tied it round my neck, so that Gawain wouldn't be the only one looking ridiculous, and Agravain and Gaheris promised to write to their mother to ask for two of her laciest scarves, and to wear them forever in loyalty to their brother.

But Gawain was still huddled on the floor and sobbing. 'It's not funny!' he burst out. 'If you won't banish me, then take away my armour and dress me in motley and keep me as your fool, because I'm not worthy to be a knight!'

At that point, Sir Kay went and knelt next to Gawain on the floor. 'Gawain,' he said, 'you do know how Arthur became king, don't you?'

Gawain said, 'Wasn't it because he pulled a sword out of a stone, when you wanted one for a tournament?'

Kay said, 'That's right. But when he brought it to me and told me where he'd found it, I pretended that I'd pulled it out, and that I was the one destined to be king. I suppose I was jealous because I wished I could have done anything that good, and I knew I'd never have been stubborn enough to keep pulling until it came out, and I didn't see why Arthur was always Merlyn's favourite. And there wasn't really any point, because when I told my father I'd pulled the sword from the stone, he just said, "Are you _sure_ that's true?" And after all, that's a much bigger lie than just keeping quiet about being given a silk scarf – but Arthur didn't banish me, did he?'

So Gawain cheered up, and all of us swore to wear ladies' scarves in loyalty to him, and that was the beginning of the Order Of The Scarf. And since then, there have been times when Gawain got things seriously wrong, not just tiny mistakes like that. But he told me that, when he looks at the green and gold scarf, he remembers that I still love him and that he's always welcome back, whatever happens.

'Well, things like that happen to me all the time, and I don't behave as though it's the end of the world,' said Jack when I'd finished. 'But I suppose it's harder for someone like Gawain who believes in stuff like honour and chivalry, because he's got more to lose. Personally, I've never understood what people mean by honour.'

'It depends who's saying it,' I said. 'You're right that a lot of the time they don't mean anything, because they're just talking about reputation: a soldier's reputation for courage, a woman's reputation for chastity, or anything like that. But to Gawain, it means things like _really_ keeping promises, _really_ facing up to danger and trying to do what's right, whether anyone's going to know whether he did or not – and keeping on trying, even after realising that he's not perfect.'

'If you think about it, what any word means depends on its context,' said Cheiron. 'If you read in a poem that a certain knight "loved freedom and honour, truth and courtesy," that doesn't tell you whether he defended other people's freedom or just wanted to be able to do whatever he liked himself, or whether he strove to behave honourably or just wanted to be honoured. You'd have to read the rest of the poem to find out how he behaved.'

Jack rolled his eyes. 'Teachers! I can't say anything without getting an explanation in stereo!'

'Well, I have been a teacher for a good few thousand years now,' pointed out Cheiron. 'Ever since I was sitting with Jason in a cave in Greece. And talking of caves, if I leave you two tomorrow morning, can you meet me at the Lair of the White Rabbit in about a month's time?'

I mentally calculated the distance to the Lair of the White Rabbit, and how many miles per day we could manage with backpacks on, without Cheiron to act as a packhorse. 'I think so, but why there? It's a grim, desolate sort of place, even after the Rabbit's been dead for so long.'

'Is that the fluffy white bunny that leapt six feet in the air and ripped people's throats out?' asked Jack. 'The one that killed so many on the Grail quest? There was a ballad about _that_ legend that came down to my time, a thousand years later: "Sir Gawain and Sir Bors it slew, and many a worthy knight." Did that really happen?'

'Well, not those two; Bors lived to find the Holy Grail and drink Communion from it, and Gawain was alive and well when I last saw him a couple of months ago. All the same, that fluffy bunny with pink eyes and razor teeth _did_ kill a lot of my knights who went to search for the Holy Grail, but it's been dead for years now. But, Cheiron, why exactly are we going there?'

'Because there's another man I'd like to bring to join us, and he's a bit solitary, so I thought he might feel safer living in a cave until he's settled in,' said Cheiron. 'But in the meantime, are you two all right to carry what you need?'

We looked at each other. 'I think so,' said Jack. 'I'm a lot stronger than when I arrived here. I mean, I don't plan to sleep in armour on the bare ground like Gawain, but we don't really need thick sleeping-bags now it's this hot – I can't believe I was shivering so much, that first night! And without your vegetarian conscience, Cheiron, instead of carting around cooking-pots and bags of barley and dried peas, we can just shoot the odd deer when we're hungry, and roast it.'

'Maybe not a deer, for just two of us,' I said. 'But there are rabbits and hares, and lots of ripe berries in the woods now, so we needn't live on dried food.'

Cheiron normally carried two supply-bags on a harness around his horse-body, and a third as a rucksack on his human back, but the two horseback ones had detachable straps and belts to turn them back into rucksacks. We took the tent down and practised fitting it and the supplies we thought we'd need into the spare rucksacks, and then putting them on and trying to stand up with them on.

'Arthur,' said Jack at last, 'you must be a witch like your sisters, because you've transfigured me. I know, because I can buckle the belt of this thing round my waist, and last time I checked, I didn't _have_ a waist – I had an equator!'

'The pack isn't too heavy, is it?' I'd put most of the heavy equipment in my own bag, but after all, Jack was still far from well, and the side-pockets of his bag contained assorted bottles of medicine with a note from Cheiron reminding him which ones to take when. I didn't want to drive him too hard.

'Oh, I'm stronger than I look. Once I carried the body of a slain foe rights across a battlefield, to show him to the king and prove that I'd killed him.'

'And had you?' I asked.

'Well, not exactly – but I would have done if he hadn't been dead already. Anyway, I can manage this, no problem. Gallop off now, Cheiron, and we'll see you at the Lair of the White Rabbit.'


	15. Chapter 15

[told by Sir Andrew Aguecheek]

'I thought you said your uncle lived near here,' said Malvolio.

'I don't even know where "here" is,' I protested. 'I said his country house was a couple of miles from where we were _supposed_ to get off the boat, and there was a pony-trap service to take our luggage...'

'There _were_ people to take our luggage,' Malvolio pointed out. 'Six large men with cudgels and daggers. I suppose it didn't occur to you that, considering you're supposed to be a knight, you might have thought of drawing your sword to put them off the idea?'

'If I had, they'd have stolen the sword as well. It's quite an expensive one. But anyway, my uncle is the magistrate for this – for where we meant to get off, and when we give a description of the robbers to the police, and the police catch them, I'm sure my uncle can sort everything out.'

'Have you _seen_ a policeman since we landed?' snapped Malvolio. 'Or do the English police traditionally disguise themselves as trees? In the five hours that we've been tramping through dense forest since we got off in what you said was the right place...'

'Well, I couldn't see properly. It was only just dawn, and anyway I was too seasick to notice where we were.'

'In the past five hours, we haven't seen a single human being except those robbers, nor any human habitation, and our total wealth now consists of – well, what did you have in your pockets when we ran away?'

I checked. 'A hairbrush, a bottle of shampoo with the lid off, a Portuguese dictionary soaked in shampoo, a pocket mirror, and my notebook for writing down interesting words. What about you?'

'Three wax candles, a box of matches, a pencil and paper, and a copy of _Silas Marner_. Which, incidentally, was first published in 1861.' Malvolio paused dramatically.

'That's interesting,' I said politely.

'If you wouldn't mind lining up your surviving brain cells, sir, can you remember the date when we left Illyria?'

'The beginning of February...' I began to see what Malvolio was driving at. 'Yes, that _is_ odd, isn't it? I mean, we didn't seem to be on the boat for more than a couple of weeks, and now it's the middle of summer. Do you think we've been kidnapped and brainwashed and then made to forget it?'

'Never mind the month – what _year_ was it?'

'1600 – no, wait, 1601.'

'Exactly. And yet I own a book written two hundred and sixty years in the future. And you remember that old man we were talking to, the night before we set sail?'

'You told me I dreamed all that!'

'The next morning, I saw an obituary of him in a London newspaper.'

'That's quick. How did they find out so soon that he was dead?'

'I don't know,' said Malvolio, 'but it was a very old newspaper. It was printed in September 1415.'

So we had seen a ghost. I had even held a ghost in my arms, and he hadn't felt at all ghostly: sweaty and shivering and tearful, heavy and flabby and smelling as if he hadn't washed for a while, but definitely not like anything eerie or unearthly. 'Maybe someone kept the paper to try to finish the crossword,' I said. 'That'd be awfully difficult, doing a crossword from two hundred years ago, because they had different spelling then. But anyway, what did it say about him?'

'Not a lot. I imagine that either he was a shadowy figure and the reporter didn't know much about him, or the tabloids had been so full of every detail during his lifetime that it wasn't worthwhile for a respectable newspaper to repeat it all. But apparently he was a soldier – even an officer, though goodness knows who'd put someone like that in charge of anything! He fought at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1406, and claimed to have killed some rebel leader, but nobody knew whether that was true or not. What _was_ definitely true was that 98% of the soldiers he'd led into battle got killed, and his only comment was that they were as good for filling a pit as better men. He sounds a nasty piece of work.'

'It was probably just a joke,' I said. 'Maybe he was upset about what had happened and didn't want to admit it.'

'Don't you believe it! He was very pleased with himself over having supposedly killed this enemy leader, and he said he wanted to be made a duke or at least an earl as a reward, as long as it didn't mean he had to lose weight or adopt a healthy lifestyle. People like that aren't capable of caring about anyone except themselves.' After a slight pause, Malvolio added, 'By the way, what exactly is an earl?'

'It's sort of the English equivalent of a count,' I explained.

'So he was aiming for the same rank as we were?' Malvolio shook his head as if to dislodge this thought, and went on: 'But anyway, that doesn't explain why someone who died in London in 1415 should suddenly turn up in Illyria nearly two hundred years later.'

'Maybe ghosts just appear when they feel like it,' I said. 'Maybe he'd been murdered and wanted us to find out who did it. I wish I was in a murder mystery.'

'But you faint at the sight of blood,' Malvolio pointed out.

'Ah, yes, but if this was a murder mystery, I'd secretly be a genius detective who only _looked_ like a useless twit,' I said. 'Or if it was a farce, you'd be an incredibly suave butler who knows all about everything from Greek philosophy to the racehorses at Ascot to how to get my friends to admit to being in love with each other when they're so shy that _she_ only wants to talk about fairy-tales and _he_ only wants to talk about newts. You're not, are you?'

'Certainly not,' said Malvolio. 'I'm an honest man, and I have no intention of metamorphosing into a cross between Pandarus and a racing columnist.'

'Well, if things are going to be this confusing, it'd help if one of us was a genius,' I said.

'Andrew! Malvolio! You took your time over getting here!' called a familiar voice. 'I've been walking with King Arthur these past two months, shouldering packs with him in the hot sun and keeping his spirits up on the trek to the Lair of the White Rabbit, and you two just turn up when it suits you!'

By this time we had rounded the bend in the path and come face to face with Sir John Oldcastle and a tall, armoured man who could easily slice us into shreds. 'Still, Arthur,' Sir John continued, 'shall we forgive them and let them come with us anyway? They were probably just too shy to ask, when they saw you before.'

King Arthur looked puzzled. 'Have we met?' he asked. 'When?'

'Don't you remember?' persisted Sir John. 'When I was dying and you came to summon me? They were keeping me company then. The lad with hair like mouldy straw was giving me a cuddle.'

King Arthur shook his head. 'I think you must have dreamt that. I've never seen these gentlemen in my life.'

Sir John breathed heavily a couple of times, then roared: 'You kings are all the same, aren't you? You'll be friends with a man as long as it suits you, then disown him without a moment's warning! Now you're trying to deny that Malvolio and Sir Andrew were sitting with me when the three of us had nothing left but our failures and disappointments, and shared those. Well, at this rate, how long will it be before you swear three times before the cock crows that you've never met me either? You're just like all kings, and I don't want to be your friend ever again!'

King Arthur waited for him to pause for breath, and then said, 'Jack, you know I love you, and I'm sure these friends of yours are good men and they're welcome to join us. I just meant that when I met you, there were different people attending you: a woman, and a boy of about twelve or thirteen, and a man with a very red face and an army uniform. I don't think they could see me, though.'

'We couldn't see you, either,' I said. 'We heard your voice at first, and then we didn't.'

For a moment we all stood around, trying to make sense of this, and then Sir John said: 'Of course! Do you remember Cheiron explaining about how things smaller than atoms are in two places at once, and don't decide where they are until someone looks at them? But I'm much bigger than an atom, so there was enough of me to be in _three_ places at the same time. I was in an inn in London in my world, with Robin, my page; and Bardolph, the man with a face that looks like Hell-fire; and Nell, who was the owner of the inn where I was staying, and the wife of another of my followers. But at the same time, I was in a room in a different inn in Illyria, with Sir Andrew and Malvolio, and also in a clearing in a forest somewhere with you and Cheiron. But you had to look at me for me to choose where I really was, like an electron. And I'm sorry I shouted at you, Arthur.'

'I'm not,' said King Arthur. 'If I'd been behaving as shabbily as you thought, I'd have deserved it.'

'Well, I'll introduce everyone. Arthur, this is Malvolio of Illyria, who is probably brave, honest, and responsible, which is a lot more than I am. This is Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is young and might be innocent for all I know, which is more than any of us is, and who has streams of sweet sympathy running through his heart, if you can drill through the strata of stupidity, vanity, and prejudices, to get at them. And this is King Arthur, the utterly memorable King of Britain, who pulled the sword out of the scone and is definitely not to be confused with Alfred the Cake.'

'But we don't even come from the same era,' complained Malvolio. 'We're from the seventeenth century, you're from the fifteenth, and goodness knows when King Arthur was supposed to have been alive – if you'll forgive my discourtesy, your majesty, but there really isn't any evidence that you ever existed.'

'Well, of course there isn't!' said Sir John. 'We're not in a history any more, so it doesn't have to be any particular century. It was the same when I was staying in Windsor: as far as I could find out, the king was still Henry V, but all the hit pop songs were by a king called Henry VIII, like _Greensleeves_ and _Pastime With Good Company_. And there was a wonderful restaurant specialising in exotic foods from the New World. Now, I don't see how turkeys are ever going to replace a good capon, but potatoes are the finest vegetable ever invented, especially roast, and chocolate gateau is just amazing. Only it was a while before I even found out where 'the New World' was – for all I knew, it could have been a colony on the moon.

'And there were actors who sometimes came there to act all kinds of plays in Windsor Park – or at least, they did when people like Malvolio didn't stop them because their plays were so godless. Well, in my day, practically all the plays had been about Bible stories, but _these_ plays were about anything _except_ Bible stories: plays about fairies, plays about usurper kings, plays about star-crossed lovers or identical twins or girls disguised as boys – whatever the author felt like writing and people wanted to see. But the point was, there were history plays about kings who'd lived _after_ my time but _before_ whenever it was in Windsor, and those had a specific place and date. But if the play was a comedy, it didn't remotely matter if it was about some modern-day English workmen putting on a play for a king in ancient Athens.

'So you see, the story I was living in while I was in Windsor must have been pure comedy, rather than a historical comedy drama, which meant nothing too bad could happen to me while I was there. But as soon as I went back to London, I was back in the cycle of history plays, which meant I could die, and so, when I died, I finished up here in Arthur's world. And so have you.'

'That doesn't even begin to make sense,' said Malvolio.

'Well, no,' I said, 'but then, things didn't make much sense in our world, either, did they? Meeting identical twins who are a brother and sister doesn't really make sense, unless we were in a play by someone who's obsessed with twins and with transvestites. And maybe we shouldn't have been so horrible to you for being a Puritan, but we had to be, if we were written by a playwright who was angry with Puritans for making it difficult for him to make a living.'

'Is there anyone sane I can talk to?' groaned Malvolio. 'Someone who can tell us how to get back to our own world?'

'I don't know,' said King Arthur, 'but I think your best bet is a friend of ours called Cheiron. We're just on our way to meet him, as it happens – if I remember rightly, we should be only two or three miles away from the meeting-point now. So if you'd like to come with us, we'll see whether Cheiron can send you home.'

'That's if you want to go home,' added Sir John. 'I can't go back to my world, because I'm dead there, but you two have probably got the option. But have you got anything to go back for? Or anyone who wants you back?'

'I've got' – I paused to consider – 'an uncle who pays me three thousand ducats a year not to come near him, another uncle who lets me come and visit his estate and ride his horses and hunt in his deer-park but he's usually away when I go to stay there, and a third uncle who just likes to be left alone in his library. And there's an aunt who keeps asking me when I'm going to get into university, and another aunt who thinks I ought to get married. They've been taking it in turns to put up with me since I was eleven.'

'You're an orphan, then?' said Sir John. 'No parents to nag you about getting drunk and starting fights?'

'He's got me now,' said Malvolio. 'And I'm not going to let you corrupt this boy.'

'I'm not trying to corrupt him! Since I've been here, I've been such a paragon of virtue that I hardly recognise myself, haven't I, Arthur?'


	16. Chapter 16

[still told by Sir Andrew]

The path to the Lair of the White Rabbit was a bit longer than King Arthur had remembered, and led up and down rocky slopes. It didn't look like anything I recognised, but I suppose England looked different a thousand years ago. It wasn't even England, because it was Britain in those days. We tried explaining to Malvolio why this was, but as I'd never paid much attention to history lessons as a child, and neither had Sir John, and King Arthur's tutor had been a time-travelling wizard who could remember the future, we were all a bit hazy about the details.

Eventually, Arthur said, 'Ah, here we are. Now, Cheiron is a centaur – a being who's half man and half horse – but I promise you can trust him. We'll meet him in just a moment, and I think he's bringing another friend to join us.'

A shrill voice to the left of the path cackled, 'We're over here!' at which a warm, motherly voice on the right said, 'No, moi loverr, 'tis over 'ere.' Next, a deep, resonant voice from the cave in front of us said, 'Erik, stop messing about,' and then the same deep voice again, now behind us, said, 'Sorry about Erik – he's a ventriloquist, and he won't stop showing off.'

We looked at each other, and King Arthur said, 'Well, the cave is this way, anyway – and there's a sheer cliff off to the right.'

While he was still speaking, a voice that seemed to come from deep underground said, 'By all the djinn of the desert, Cheiron, what kind of freak have you wished on me now?' A moment later, Cheiron the centaur came out, carrying a man who looked like a skeleton in a suit. I didn't want to look, in case the man's head turned out to be a skull, but when he looked towards us I realised that he did have a face, because there were dark pinkish-purple scars running across his pale, shrivelled skin. I wondered whether he'd been hurt in a fight and Cheiron had looked after him until he got better, the way Malvolio had for me.

'And now you can say hello like a normal person,' said Cheiron, setting Erik down on the ground. 'This is King Arthur, this is Sir John Oldcastle...'

'No he isn't,' said Erik, whose glowing yellow eyes were staring into Sir John's. 'I know who you are: you're the inspiration for operas by Verdi, Salieri, Vaughan Williams, Carl Otto Nicolai, and Gordon Getty, plus a symphonic study by Elgar. And who did _I_ get? Andrew Lloyd-Webber! But everyone knows your name; it's too famous to be hidden.'

'I can be famous under any name,' said Sir John, 'but Oldcastle was my name in the original manuscript. It's just that my author had to change it for legal reasons.'

'I, too, have gone under many names,' said Erik. 'In the circus, I was exhibited as The Living Corpse. In Persia, I was known as He Who Loves Trapdoors, and in Constantinople, I was The Fiend with the Punjab Lasso. In Paris, I was The Phantom to those who feared me, The Angel of Music to my admirers, and Erik to my girlfriend.'

'Erik, we've been through this,' sighed Cheiron. 'She wasn't ever your girlfriend. Kidnapping does not constitute a relationship.'

'It wasn't just kidnapping!' protested Erik. 'There was all the stalking first, as well. Anyway, it was the nearest I've ever had to a relationship. You see, I am a man of exceptional gifts and exceptional defects. I am a greater musician than Mozart, and more multi-talented than Leonardo Da Vinci, but, to balance this, I was born uglier than Quasimodo and more deranged than the Emperor Caligula.'

'And even more of a show-off than I am,' concluded Sir John. 'You should fit in perfectly with this lot.'

'I've never fitted in anywhere,' said Erik wretchedly, and then brightened. 'But now that Cheiron's mending me, I might! Has anyone got a mirror?'

I fished mine out of my pocket, wiped the shampoo-smears off it with my sleeve, and handed it to Erik, who stood for several minutes peering at his reflection, and running his pale, bony fingers over his face in astonishment. 'I have a nose!' he exclaimed. 'I own an actual nose that isn't made of wax and is an integral part of my face, and I don't need to wear a mask ever again! Cheiron, you're nearly as great a genius as I am!' And with that, he threw himself down on the ground and began kissing the centaur's hooves.

'Oh, it was the least I could do,' said Cheiron. 'But getting enough sunlight and fresh air, and remembering to eat meals, will do more for your looks than my poor skill in surgery ever could.'

'That's doctors for you!' said Sir John. 'He's always nagging me like that, as well.'

Erik jumped up, his eyes blazing and his fists clenched. 'Don't you dare say a word against Cheiron!' he shrieked. 'He's a god, do you hear me, a _god_! He's ransomed my life from the grave and he's given me a nose, and now I'm starting to look nearly like a normal person, the sort of man who can get a flat and a wife and live a normal life and go and assassinate Andrew Lloyd-Webber!'

Cheiron laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Erik, we agreed: no more assassinations.'

'Are you a real assassin?' I asked. 'A professional one, I mean?'

'Amongst other things. I have been a sideshow freak, conjuror and ventriloquist; a political assassin and executioner; an inventor of mechanical toys, spy devices, and instruments of torture; an architect and building contractor; and a protection racketeer, composer, and singing teacher. What do you do?'

'Not a lot,' I said. 'I like fencing and dancing, and I'd like to learn to sing. Could you teach me, do you think?'

Erik shrugged. 'I can try, I suppose. What voice are you?'

'How do you mean?'

'I mean, what notes can you sing? Most men are either bass, baritone, tenor, or occasionally alto; most women are soprano or alto, but I've heard some good female tenors. Personally, I've always been able to sing everything from bass to top soprano, which means that an opera scored for tenor hero, soprano heroine, pompous bass in love with the heroine, elderly ugly contralto in love with the hero, comic baritone with patter-song, and male and female choruses, is, if you look at it another way, an opera scored for Erik. But anyway, try singing something.'

I launched into a song I remembered Feste singing:

'_Come away, come away, death,_

_And in sad cypress let me be laid;_

_Fly away, fly away, breath;_

_I am slain by a fair cruel maid._

_My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,_

_O, prepare it!_

_My part of death, no-one so true_

_Did share it.'_

Erik nodded. 'I'd say you're a light tenor: rather a narrow range, so you probably shouldn't attempt difficult classical pieces, but you should be all right on popular and folk songs. But you're a dilettante, a hobbyist, that's your trouble! You could have hit all the notes in that song without straining; as it was, you got about two-thirds of them right. You must learn to listen, to hear how a song should sound, and then learn to listen to yourself as you sing it back! This is how the tune goes:

'_Not a flower, not a flower sweet,_

_On my black coffin let there be strown;_

_Not a friend, not a friend greet_

_My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown;_

_A thousand thousand sighs to save,_

_Lay me, O, where_

_Sad true lover never find my grave_

_To weep there!'_

'In my opinion, sir, it would be best to ignore Monsieur Erik,' said Malvolio in his most butler-ish voice. 'His interest in giving you music lessons is more likely to lie in his amusement at your failure, rather than a desire to develop your negligible ability.'

'No, Monsieur Serviteur, it doesn't!' snapped Erik. 'I don't care about this brainless popinjay for himself, but I do care about music, and I wouldn't try to teach it to someone who didn't have potential.'

'How do you spell "popinjay"?' I asked.

'P, O, P, I, N, J, A, Y,' said Erik. 'It means "a shallow and conceited fop", and comes from Spanish, ultimately from Arabic.'

'Thank you!' I borrowed Malvolio's pencil and wrote the word in my notebook before I had time to forget it, underneath 'poetaster' and 'pleonasm'.

'Would you like something to eat?' asked Cheiron. 'Erik requested mushroom soup and a strawberry flan, but by the time I'd made them, he'd decided he wasn't hungry.'

'I just don't like home-made food,' grumbled Erik. 'And I hate English bread; it's all brown and stodgy. In Paris, _if_ I wanted to eat, I could put on my "looking like a normal person" mask, go out through the tunnel to the market and pick up a croissant and a baguette and a bit of Brie, and then go home to my island on my subterranean lake and spend the day in peace. And if I didn't feel like eating, there was nobody to pressure me about it. Anyway, I hate eating in front of other people.'

'Good, we'll eat yours, then,' said Sir John. 'I've been fading away since breakfast.'

'Malvolio and I didn't even get round to having breakfast,' I added.

So Cheiron shared out the thick, dark, field-mushroom soup and the wholemeal bread, followed by the flan. There wasn't much between the six of us (or five really, because Erik refused to eat anything except a tiny piece of flan), but it was delicious, and afterwards, I decided to do the washing-up. When I'd put everything to drain on the ground outside the cave, King Arthur noticed that I was doing. 'Oh, thank you, Sir Andrew, that's very helpful,' he said. 'But – can I ask you something?'

'Of course.'

'Well, in my day, boys who were expecting to become knights would start off working as pages, just doing routine chores, then serve as squire to a knight, and then be knighted themselves if they proved worthy. I didn't think I actually would become a knight, because I was a foundling and didn't know who my parents were, but I'd served my apprenticeship anyway, just in case. Now, did trainee knights still prepare like that, later on?'

'I did,' said Sir John. 'I was page to Sir Thomas Mowbray.'

'Well, I didn't!' I said. 'I thought that was what servants were for! And I know you two probably think I'm not a real knight because I've never been a soldier and I was dubbed with unhatched rapier upon carpet consideration and I can't even win a fight against a girl, but I was just trying to be helpful by doing the washing-up, and if I haven't done it the right way, well, it was my first time, and I don't see how being good at housework is going to turn me into a hero!'

'Maybe it won't,' said King Arthur, 'but it will mean that we aren't eating dinner off dishes that still have bits of lunch stuck to them. You see, if you just dip plates and dishes in water, it doesn't always dislodge all the bits of food, and then, if you leave them stacked right-side-up, one on top of the other, they won't drip dry. Shall I show you how to do it? You see, this is a washing-up bowl, and this is a rinsing-bowl, and this is called a scrubbing-brush...'

'If it's going to take a long time to explain, I'm going to get my head down for a bit,' said Sir John. 'Don't be ashamed; Arthur's nephew Gareth spent a year working in the kitchens of Camelot, in disguise so that nobody even knew he was the King's nephew and the brother of the great Sir Gawain. He was knighted after he'd fought a Green Knight, but a different one from the Green Knight Sir Gawain fought. In fact, Sir Gareth fought a whole spectrum, with the Red Knight and the Puce Knight and the Indigo Knight and the Knight in White Satin; his adventures were like one of those picture-books for teaching babies to recognise colours. Get Arthur to tell you the story later.'

And with that he disappeared into the cave, leaving King Arthur to show me how to wash up properly. It was a bit complicated, but I got the hang of it in the end, and in a way it was good that people could be bothered to correct me. In my world, everyone had either said, 'Yes, yes, your clothes/hair/dancing looks very nice; yes, of course my niece wants to marry you; now I'll have another bottle of Amontillado, as it's your round,' or they'd told me I was a waste of space, or they'd just pretended I didn't exist. Erik and King Arthur were the first people I'd met who took me seriously and really believed I could learn things.


	17. Chapter 17

[Sir Andrew continues]

By the time we'd finished washing up after lunch, Cheiron was asking Erik to think about what he wanted for dinner.

'Skylarks?' suggested Erik.

'Hmmm – English people don't usually eat songbirds,' said Cheiron. 'I know there's no logical reason why it's all right to eat chickens and ducks but not larks or thrushes, but it's just not traditional in these parts.'

'Can we have trout with watercress, then?'

'That's a good idea. There's a river full of trout not far away, so if we catch some this afternoon, they'll be beautifully fresh. And have you had any thoughts about breakfast tomorrow?'

'Are you quite sure we can't get croissants or _pains chocolats_ made with proper French wheat?'

'I'm afraid not. I could make fruit scones, though, if you'd like something sweet, and you could always have drinking chocolate to go with them.'

'You only let _me_ have one mug of chocolate a day, at bedtime!' protested Sir John. 'Why's Erik allowed it for breakfast?'

'I don't want chocolate anyway,' announced Erik. 'I'd rather have an omelette.'

'Yes, you could use the protein,' said Cheiron. 'If you want to ride on my back, we could go down to the farm now to buy some eggs for tomorrow morning.'

'But the people at the farm always stare at me,' complained Erik, 'and now you've taken my bandages off, they'll be able to see my scars and they'll stare even more. Can't you go on your own?'

'Now, you know I'm supposed to keep an eye on you,' said Cheiron.

'I'll go, if you like,' offered Malvolio. 'Which way is the farm, anyway?'

So Cheiron gave Malvolio a purse of money and a shopping-list and sent him off, the King and Sir John went fishing, and I stayed behind to let Erik resume my music lesson, while Cheiron knelt on the ground, sewing, and made sure we were behaving ourselves.

'You need to learn to hear _notes_ – don't worry about the words for now,' Erik began. 'I'll sing a note, and you sing it back. _Aaah!_'

'_Aaah!_' I sang back.

'Aaaaaah!'

'Aaaaaah!'

'**AAAH**!'

'**AAAH**!'

'Ah! Ah! Aaah!'

'D! D! G! D! D! G! DCBA, GABC, D! D! G!' I sang, as the tune was obviously 'Hot Cross Buns'.

'NO!' snarled Erik. 'If you're going to sing note names, you might as well be singing the words. I just want you to sing back _precisely_ what I sing to you, or you can stop wasting my time.'

'Calm down, Erik, he's doing his best,' said Cheiron.

'No, he isn't; that's the trouble! Try again, English knight: Ah! **AH!** _Aaah!_'

'Ah! **AH!** _Aaah!_' I sang.

'That's it! You see, Cheiron, he _can_ do it right! Now we'll try a song, but it'll have to be one you don't understand, so you're just concentrating on the sounds. Do you speak French?'

'A bit,' I said.

'Enough to understand what you're saying?'

'Sometimes. I can say, _Je suis Anglais, donc je suis imbecile_, which means, "Hello, it's lovely to be here." But I don't usually understand what people say to me in return.'

Erik cackled with laughter. 'Well, that's good enough for me! Now sing: _Calme des nuits..._'

'_Karma day newts..._'

'_Fraicheur des soirs..._'

'_Pressure day sores..._'

'_Vaste scintillements des mondes!_'

'_Faster sentiments day mongrels!'_

By the time the others came back with food supplies, Erik and I had broken the backs of _Calme Des Nuits_ and _Come Away Death_, and made a start on _Parisian Pierrot_. I had been concentrating harder on singing than I had done on anything before, and was intellectually drained and more than ready to fall asleep, and, when Cheiron showed us the new tents and backpacks he'd made so that everyone could carry a fair share of the luggage, I felt even wearier.

King Arthur cooked a beautiful meal of trout in watercress sauce, and even Erik agreed to eat a small piece of fish, because, he said, he needed to keep his strength up if he was trying to teach me to sing. He kept his eyes closed while he ate, in case the sight of the rest of us eating put him off. Cheiron, who was a vegetarian, munched his way through a huge platter of raw watercress and bread, and afterwards King Arthur brought out a basket of berries for dessert. Finally, we began to sort out where we were going to sleep for the night, and then the trouble started.

'I can't go to sleep if there's a candle burning!' snapped Erik. 'You can use it to light your way to bed, but you'll have to snuff it out before you go to sleep.'

'Well, I can't sleep if it's pitch-dark,' retorted Malvolio. 'This cave is as dark as a madhouse.'

'You're not still going on about that, are you?' exclaimed Sir John. 'It was months ago! If I had a hang-up about every time someone had played a prank on me, I'd need to develop a phobia of rivers, laundry baskets, deer-horns, women's clothes, buckram cloaks, and waiters hovering in the background who turn out to be my friends in disguise spying on me to find out what I say about them behind their backs. I wouldn't be able to open my eyes without having a panic attack!'

'Come on, everyone knows you're a complete coward,' sneered Malvolio.

'When it comes to people with swords who are trying to kill me, yes! When you've run away from as many fights as I have, it doesn't leave room for worrying about being ridiculous.'

'What about fear of being rejected by someone you love?' asked Cheiron.

'Well, that's already happened,' muttered Sir John.

'It's happened to everyone here,' said Cheiron. 'Everyone is scarred by rejection, and if the worst effect it's had on Malvolio is that, for the time being, he doesn't feel comfortable sleeping in complete darkness, that's no reason to make fun of him.'

'It is pathetic, though, isn't it?' said Malvolio. 'It's wasteful leaving a candle burning all night, and it's a fire hazard, and it's extremely childish.'

'You could try reading by candlelight to help you relax, before you go to sleep,' suggested Cheiron. 'What are you reading? _Silas Marner_?'

'Yes. And I know it's an anachronism, but it's a beautiful book, even if it was written by a woman called George who lived with a man also called George who was married to someone else. I know woman George must have been a very wicked woman, but she must have had some good in her, to write a book like this.'

'Do you remember the bit where Silas's friends tell him that he has to punish his child when she's naughty, either by smacking her or putting her in the coal-hole? So he puts her in there for about ten seconds, takes her out and gives her a bath and sits down to get on with his work, and a few minutes later, Eppie's wandered off again? Because she wants to go on with this wonderful new game of playing in the coal-hole!'

'Yes – I suppose it's not really a punishment if Eppie doesn't know it's supposed to be scary,' said Malvolio. 'It's a lovely, happy book, isn't it?'

'Well, then, you think about Silas and Eppie before you go to sleep, and then you'll fall asleep feeling happy,' said Cheiron. 'And if you decide to sleep in one of the tents, that wouldn't be as dark as the cave. It's not likely to rain tonight, so you could have the tent flap open if you like, so you can see the moon and the stars.'

'I suppose I could,' said Malvolio dubiously. 'You know, some people think moonlight makes you go mad. That's where the word "lunatic" comes from.'

'Well, I've been a doctor for over two thousand years, and I can promise you it's not true,' said Cheiron. 'And the fact that I'm happy for you to sleep in moonlight shows that I don't think there's any danger of your becoming a lunatic.'

'Can I sleep in the tent as well?' I asked. 'Only I don't know anyone else here very well, and we're – well, not friends, but we've been enemies longer than we've known any of the others.'

'You don't fancy spending the night with Erik? I don't blame you,' said Malvolio.

Cheiron helped us to put the tent up, and we didn't say anything further until the others had retired to the cave. When we were in our sleeping-bags, Malvolio asked quietly, 'Do you want to stay with these people?'

'I like them,' I said. 'Don't you?'

'Not particularly. Cheiron _seems_ friendly enough, but the fact is that he's a creature from pagan mythology. King Arthur is supposed to have been a Christian king, but his tutor who helped him become king was a wizard, and now, when he's old enough to know better, he seems to be deliberately surrounding himself with the vilest criminals he can find. Then again,' Malvolio added thoughtfully, 'it's possible that this is some kind of test, to separate the wheat from the tares. In which case, if I stay with him to speak up for honesty and decency, I can't fail to show to my best advantage compared to Erik and Sir John.'

'They're not that bad,' I said. 'They're probably just lost and lonely, like us, not really evil. Of if they are evil, maybe King Arthur wants to help them reform.'

'And that's the other reason I ought to stay,' said Malvolio. 'Because you don't seem to be able to recognise evil when it's staring you in the face, but I'm not convinced you're entirely evil yourself yet – or at least, I don't know for certain that you're predestined to eternal damnation. You generally just mimic the vices of whoever you're with. If I was a Catholic, I'd probably conclude that you were heading towards Limbo, but, as a Protestant, I have to accept that you're either going to Heaven or Hell, which leaves open the possibility that you might be one of the people God wants to save. In which case, I think I'd better act as your good angel trying to protect you from the influence of the fiends in that cave. Goodnight.'

I could hear the 'fiends' Erik and Sir John laughing loudly at something, probably Malvolio. I wished I was in the cave with them.


	18. Chapter 18

[Told by Sir John]

'Is King Arthur asleep yet?' whispered Erik.

'I think so,' I whispered back. 'But keep your voice low anyway.'

'What's he like?'

I thought about it. 'Not bad, as kings go. You know how some of them are like gobstoppers, changing colour as each layer is stripped away until there's nothing left, but he's like a stick of rock with "Arthur" written all the way through.' I had wondered at first why Arthur was so different from any king I'd ever met, and now I thought I knew. 'You see, he grew up not knowing that he was the heir, and nobody else knew except Merlyn, so he never had to stage a dramatic transformation from being A Wild Prince to being A Good King. Of course, he'd had his own sort of wildness, with being turned into animals and having adventures with outlaws and witches, but apart from that, most of his friends when he was young would have been honest people, like the kennel-boy and the austringer in his foster-father's castle, and the farm workers in the village. And there was no-one to tell him he shouldn't associate with commoners. So when he came to power, there was no-one he had to kick out of his way: no-one he was ashamed of knowing. And now that he's established and everyone knows what sort of king he is, he doesn't need to be ashamed of being friends with _anyone_, good or bad.'

'So, not the sort of king who has his palace laid out with an intricate system of traps, torture-chambers, and dungeons, and then tries to kill the inventor to stop him revealing the secrets?' Erik kept his voice carefully neutral, not letting on whether he thought this was a good thing or not.

'I don't think Arthur's into torturing anyone,' I said. 'He banned trial by ordeal years ago, and he's trying to have trial by combat phased out now, and replaced with trial by evidence.'

'So he might have a use for spying devices?' asked Erik eagerly. 'Does he know about Lancelot and Guinevere?'

'He doesn't really want to know,' I said, and then realised with a sinking heart that I could have put Arthur's peace of mind at risk. 'I might have let something slip the first time we met, but I was drunk and ill and I'm completely untrustworthy anyway, so he didn't pay any attention.'

'So if he doesn't want spies or torturers or assassins, what _does_ he want me for?' wailed Erik, in real despair and fear. 'Why does he want any of us?'

'Just company, I think. Anyway, we'll find out when we get back to Camelot. It'll be good to have a proper bedroom, won't it? With a picture of _The Return of the Prodigal Son_ on the wall.'

'And a coffin lined in red satin to sleep in,' said Erik longingly.

I hadn't expected this. 'You sleep in a coffin? What are you: a vampire?'

'Certainly not,' said Erik. 'I'm a normal man who just happens to sleep _in_ a coffin _on_ an island _in_ a lake _under_ the Opera House _in_ Paris, for this is the house that Erik built! And now Cheiron's done a bit of cutting and stitching on my face, I'm even starting to look like a normal man!'

'What?' I burst out laughing. 'You look as though you've been knotted together out of three bits of mildewed string, with a pair of yellow marbles tied in for eyes. Is not your skin as yellow as a primrose, your hair worn away to three greasy wisps combed across your skull and two more to serve for a beard, and do you yet call yourself normal-looking? Are not your fingers as tendrillous as bindweed, your smile the grimace of a skull, and your laughter the shriek of a demon, and you expect to pass for _normal?_'

'Well, at least I'm not lying there like a beached whale, taking up all the room,' retorted Erik.

'And how much room do you need, when you're as withered as a strip of dried kelp?'

'You Strasburg goose!'

'You silverfish fossilised in the cliffs of Anglesey!'

It had been a while since I'd played Insults, as Arthur was always so courteous that it was hard not to be courteous in return. Back in Eastcheap, Hal and I had considered ourselves experts at the game. Robin, my page, had become quite good at it once he got over the idea that, as I was his boss, he was supposed to be respectful to me. Bardolph was hopeless, not because he was respectful, but because words weren't his strong point; and besides, as he was uglier than anyone I'd met (before I encountered Erik), nothing he could say about anyone else's appearance could match what we could say about him. Nym was a man of few words (to be precise, he knew one word, but wasn't sure what it meant), and Pistol couldn't talk except in quotations from other plays, usually Marlowe.

'You Obelix, you Michelin man, you barrage-balloon!' returned Erik, not playing badly for a beginner.

'You Lazarus coming from the tomb with the grave-cloths still on...' but at that point I was overtaken by a fit of coughing.

Under Eastcheap rules, Erik should have waited until I'd got my breath back, but instead he put in a string of terms I didn't quite catch, concluding with, 'You wineskin with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a hind!'

'That one wins!' I gasped, laughing. 'That's poetry!'

'It is, isn't it?' said Erik. 'The _Iliad_ Book One, to be precise: Achilles describing Agamemnon.'

'Let's go to sleep now,' I said. 'By tomorrow, I'll have some better descriptions of you.'

'So will I for you. Well, goodnight, Whale.'

'Goodnight, Kelp.'

When I woke, Erik was already up, and there was a letter scrawled in red ink lying next to me. It read:

_Dear Whale,_

_As a musician, my ears are the most important part of my body. Consequently, I object to being kept awake all night by someone who snores like a pneumatic drill. If you presume to snore again tonight, I will cut your throat._

_Yours sincerely,_

_The Phantom_

The letter was too glorious to keep to myself. Arthur and Cheiron were busy praying, so I went and showed it to Andrew and Malvolio first.

'His handwriting's _terrible_!' said Andrew. 'It's not even joined-up! Do you think it's written in real blood?'

I held the letter up to the sunlight. 'No, dried blood would be darker. Anyway, I shouldn't think Erik has enough blood in his body to spare any for ink, and if he'd bitten me to use mine, I'm sure I'd have felt it.' I fingered my neck for puncture wounds just in case, but didn't find any.

'We've got to report this to the King,' announced Malvolio. 'I don't like you, but I won't let you be subjected to death threats.'

'Come on, it's only a joke!' I said. 'There was a pub I used to drink in where hardly an evening went by without people pulling out daggers, posturing, maybe scuffling a bit. It always looked as though people were on the point of murdering each other, but it never actually happened.'

'Never?' asked Andrew.

'Well – hardly ever,' I admitted. 'But Erik's more of an introvert, so what he's done is a sort of cautious equivalent.'

'Yes; it's called "taunting with the licence of ink," agreed Andrew.

'Well, I still think we should tell the King and Cheiron,' repeated Malvolio.

'Tell me what?' asked Cheiron, trotting over to join us. We showed him the note. He frowned at it. 'Dear Whale?'

'We were playing Insults last night,' I explained.

'Yes, I heard you,' said Cheiron, frowning. 'You do realise Erik is a bit sensitive about the way he looks, don't you? Having spent his childhood being exhibited as a sideshow freak, I mean?'

'We were only messing around!' I protested. 'Where I come from, it's a sign of affection.'

'I know that, and I'm sure Erik knew it last night. But by this morning, he might have decided that he's mortally offended. He's a bit volatile like that.'

'Are you accusing Erik of having no sense of humour?' I asked.

'No, I'm saying he has a very twisted sense of humour,' said Cheiron. 'His idea of a hilarious practical joke involves locking people in a hall of mirrors and then turning up the heating until they go delirious with heatstroke and dehydration, and hang themselves.'

'Oh, I've been through much worse than that,' I said.

'So have I,' said Malvolio. 'And I still don't think it was funny.'

'No, but everyone else did,' pointed out Andrew.

'Bullying doesn't become all right just because you call it a joke,' said Cheiron. 'And after all, Jack, even in your world the insults didn't always stay affectionate, did they?'

'Not always.' That was the point of the game: the risk that your friend who was haranguing you in jest today might have decided by tomorrow that he really did despise you and couldn't understand why he'd ever wanted to spend time with you. It was gambling with friendship at the stake.

'Well, then: save vituperation for those you can trust. I know you like Erik, and it's perfectly all right to let him address you as Jack rather than Sir John, but letting him describe you as a beached whale and a dog-eyed wineskin when you've known him less than twenty-four hours might be a bit premature. In the meantime, I'll have a word with him myself.' And Cheiron trotted off to where Erik was sitting in the shadow of a rock. We could hear Cheiron calling as he went: 'Erik, what did we agree about not killing people _or_ threatening to kill people _or_ driving people to kill themselves?'

The telling-off continued out of earshot for a few minutes, and then Cheiron came back. 'I think Erik's ready to apologise now,' he said. 'You might like to talk to him in private, but I'll stand a short way off, just in case he starts any more trouble.'

Erik was still sitting against the rock, writing something in an exercise book, and crooning, '_Thy rebuke hath broken his heart; he is full of heaviness, he is full of heaviness._' I don't know whether he was singing about Jesus, or about me, or about himself, but probably he was just singing it because he liked melancholy songs.

'What are you writing now?' I asked. 'More death threats?'

'No, I'm practising my non-psychopathic handwriting, to help me calm down,' said Erik, holding out the notebook to show me. He had copied out, from a book that Cheiron had lent him, a poem beginning 'When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes'. Erik's 'non-psychopathic' handwriting was only slightly neater than his 'homicidal maniac' style, and still not joined up, but it was in plain black ink, and the shape of the letters was probably intended to be italic. 'You mustn't think I'm illiterate,' added Erik, 'only I've spent so much of my life travelling that I'm more used to writing either Urdu, Farsi, or Arabic. I can write musical notation of course – so if they ever find my score for _Don Juan Triumphant_, they'll know what it should sound like, but not what they're singing. Do you know what, though? I've just noticed something about this poem I never realised before. Can you see it, too?'

I shrugged. 'Well, the version I knew was "When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,/ The trick is to come out with brazen lies."' (Not that this actually helped, of course, if the person who used to love you because your lies were such fantastically tall stories, untarnished by any hint of plausibility or consistency, that they were much funnier than reality could ever be, had now decided to associate only with honest people.)

'Look at the last two lines! "And thy sweet love _remembered_ such wealth brings/ That then I scorn to change my state with kings." I used to think the poet was saying that he _is_ loved and that that makes up for everything else, but maybe he's saying he _remembers_ when he was loved, and that's enough. And I think Christine used to love me a little bit, at least when I was just the mysterious voice that taught her to sing, before she knew me as the creepy masked man who kidnapped her and held her hostage for a fortnight. I know she loved her boyfriend more – after all, they'd been best friends ever since they were children – but if I can remember that once she loved me even a little, that's better than nothing.

'You know what, though? Even after I let her go, she felt sorry for me because I was so ugly and lonely, and she used to come back and visit me sometimes. Well, until I kidnapped her again and threatened to set off a bomb and kill the two of us and her boyfriend, and everyone else in the building, unless she agreed to marry me – that did rather wreck our relationship. So after that, Christine and her boyfriend went away somewhere to get married, and I lay down in my coffin to die of a broken heart, like you, like all of us when the golden ones we've mentored no longer need us. Perhaps we're not so different after all.'

'We were opposites,' I said. 'I was like a planet, round, well-watered and full of life, as long as I could warm myself in the love of a bright star and have lesser moons to orbit me. You were like a meteorite hurtling friendlessly through cold space until you found something to smash into. But we've both finished up in the heart of Arthur's love, and that's something real, not just something to remember or long for. He doesn't need to love people _because_ they're funny or musical, or hate them because they're old or ugly. He's just got so much love pouring out of him that it cascades onto everyone else. So don't worry, Erik, lad. We'll be all right. Anyway, let's go and see if breakfast's ready yet.'


	19. Chapter 19

[Sir John continues]

One advantage to having Erik with us was that the meals became much more interesting. Unfortunately, the portions were much smaller, because Erik complained that it was tedious enough being expected to eat three meals a day without being put off his food by the sight of other people making pigs of themselves. After he'd managed to force down a portion of Cheiron's excellent herb and mushroom omelette, he retreated to the cave to catch up on the sleep he'd missed last night, as Cheiron had agreed that the sun was getting a bit hot and it might be best not to start on the journey until late afternoon.

'You never spoiled me this much when I was new here,' I pointed out to Cheiron, when I was fairly sure Erik was asleep. 'Then it was a case of: "It's porridge for breakfast – take it or leave it."'

'Yes, but there wasn't any danger of you forgetting to eat, was there?' said Cheiron. 'Have you heard of a philosopher called Epicurus?'

'Wasn't he the one who said that the right way to live is to enjoy the maximum amount of pleasure?'

'That's right: the maximum pleasure with the minimum suffering. And he said that in order to do that, you need to learn to distinguish between three types of desire. There are desires that are both natural and necessary: for example, the desire to eat enough bread not to be hungry, drink enough water not to be thirsty, and have enough shelter not to be cold. Those have to be fulfilled. Then there are desires that are natural but not strictly necessary for survival, like the desire for rich food and wine and sex. In the case of those, you need to think about whether indulging them will bring more pleasure than pain; so, if eating and drinking too much makes you ill, or having sex with lots of people means you're more likely to catch an infection, it might bring more suffering than pleasure, in which case it isn't really worth it. And thirdly, there are desires that aren't natural or necessary, like the desire for expensive clothes or fame or political power, and the key to those is to realise that they're worthless, and not seek them at all.'

'Epicurus needed to get out more,' I said. 'And which category did he think friendship came into? A mere scutcheon?'

'Oh, very high up the list of essentials. What he actually said was, "Eating a meal without a friend to share it is dining like a wolf or a lion," but that's extremely unfair on wolves; they're very sociable animals. But the point is that his theory about knowing the difference between needs and desires only works if you're conscious of _having_ needs and desires. Now, if _you're_ too hot, or tired, or hungry, you notice it, and you make sure everyone else knows as well. But Erik seems to forget that he's a mind attached to a body that needs to eat and drink, and so, for the moment, we need to tempt him to eat meals, until it becomes a habit.'

'So what you're really saying is that I'm a very physical person, whereas Erik is completely mental?'

'I'm afraid so. But you're being incredibly patient with him anyway.'

'Oh, he's not much weirder than most of the people I used to drink with in Eastcheap,' I said. 'Well – no worse than Pistol, anyway.'

Erik woke up in a reasonably good mood, and stayed patient even while trying to teach Andrew a song called _Deep Purple Dreams_. Late in the afternoon, we finally set off on our journey, until we found somewhere to camp. As we now had three tents, Erik and I shared one of the bell-tents, Andrew and Malvolio took the other, and Arthur had the pup-tent to himself.

'Promise not to kill me tonight?' I asked Erik.

'Yes, if you promise not to snore.'

'Come on, I can't promise that,' I said. 'But we've both been criminals and we're both trying to reform now, so, if you promise not to kill me, I'll promise not to steal that gold ring off your finger.'

'You wouldn't!' shrieked Erik, curling his fingers protectively round it. 'Anyway, stealing this ring would be far worse than murder.'

'Why? Is it a magic one? Does it make you invisible?'

'Far more miraculous than that, my dear Whale. This is practically very nearly a wedding-ring.'

'From that girl you kidnapped?'

'I gave it to Christine when I first wanted her to know me as a man and not as the Angel of Music. She lost it, but I found it and offered it to her again, this time as our wedding-ring, when I was trying to force her to marry me. But when she had pity on me and took off my mask and kissed my ruin of a face, when nobody else had ever kissed me in my entire life, not even my mother when I was little – then I had mercy on her, too, and gave her the ring so that she and her boyfriend could get married while I lay down to die. Then, when I was dead, they came back and placed the ring on my finger when they buried me. And that's why this ring is _preccioussss!_'

For the record, I have no idea how Erik has moved into another life still bearing the ring he was buried with. Obviously, you're not supposed to be able to take anything with you when you die. But then, Erik and I had come here in our bodies, perhaps because they were part of who we were, or because, until we'd learnt how to take proper care of our ruined earthly bodies, we couldn't be trusted with the glorious bodies of resurrection. It was like the way that very young children might keep a minnow or a snail before they are old enough to look after a dog or a horse. And Erik's 'nearly wedding-ring' was a part of who he was, too, and a reminder that mercy and generosity did exist. I was glad he'd been allowed to keep it.

'Did you sleep well?' asked Erik the next morning.

I yawned. 'Ah, yes, thanks.'

'Did you have any dreams?'

'Yes, it was great. I dreamed about a weaver who went into the forest to learn his lines for a play but got turned into a donkey, and there was a young politician who was half a fairy but was mortal from the waist down, and then the Queen of the Fairies fell in love with the donkey because he reminded her of her old lover, the Lord Chancellor, and it ended with the entire House of Lords getting married to fairies.'

'Liar!' snarled Erik. 'You were plagued by nightmares of tropical jungles, weren't you? You saw every beast of the forest either lurking to attack you or waiting to gorge itself on your carrion. Admit it!'

'No, I didn't. Was I supposed to?'

'Oh, for pity's sake!' exclaimed Erik. 'What's the point of sending you subliminal messages if you can't even be bothered to listen? For the past seven hours, I've been imitating the call of every noxious beast to trouble your sleep. I have been the roar of the lion and that of the leopard, the howl of the wolf and the yelp of the jackal and the laugh of the hyena. I have been the whine of the mosquito, the buzz of the tsetse fly and the chitter of the little South American vampire bat, all dripping with malaria and sleeping-sickness and rabies to poison your blood even as they drank from you...'

'How do you know I don't already have sleeping-sickness?' I retorted.

'I was wondering whether you'd wake up screaming or soak your sleeping-bag in terror as you snored on,' continued Erik. 'Instead of which, you just lay there dreaming a fairy-tale about donkeys and the House of Lords! There's no doubt about it: my powers are declining. Once I could keep the entire staff of the Opera House – not just hysterical singers and dancers, but everyone from the managers to sturdy firemen and horse-trainers – in such a pitch of terror that if they so much as glimpsed the rat-catcher with his lantern, they'd scream that the Phantom had a head made of fire! And now I can't even intimidate the most abject coward ever to disgrace a knighthood.'

He looked so crestfallen that I put an arm round his shoulders. 'You were just trying too hard,' I said. 'After all, I've never been to Africa, so I don't know what a hyena is supposed to sound like, do I? And anyway, I'm _not_ the most abject coward ever to disgrace a knighthood. There's always Sir Andrew.'

'He doesn't count,' said Erik. 'I think he might really have some talent as a singer, though: not a lot, but some. And that's the way the world goes. Once I was tutor to a classical soprano whose genius perfectly complemented my own; now I'm trying to teach an inane butterfly who'd quite like to be good at singing because he's used to being not very good at anything. Once you befriended a brave prince; now you're willing to spend your time with a psychopathic ex-sideshow freak. In the end, we all find companions who don't have any better options.'


	20. Chapter 20

[Sir John continues]

By the next evening, Erik had come up with a solution: 'You will not snore tonight, because you will not sleep tonight! I will sing you the whole of my masterpiece, _Don Juan Triumphant_. I have spent twenty years working on it and polishing it to perfection until every note burns, and you shall be the first audience of all five hours of it!'

'Fair enough,' I said. 'Is it funny?'

'Certainly not! It is the expression of the agony in the soul of the composer, refracted through the lens of music to express suffering in every aspect.'

'Then why are people going to want to go and see a five-hour opera about Don Juan that isn't even funny?'

'They aren't supposed to _want_ to see it! They're supposed to _have_ to go and see it!'

'Why?'

'Up until the twentieth century, there was a curious prejudice that "music" should mean a sound that people enjoyed listening to,' observed Erik. 'Gradually, classical musicians, along with artists in other media, taught the educated concert-goer to expect, instead, music that would challenge perceptions of "enjoyment" and of the distinction between "music" and "tuneless cacophony".

'But the trouble was that while this was happening in the classical realm, popular music until the 1980s consisted of tunes that people could dance to. This problem was dealt with by the invention of "dance music" consisting of nothing except a heavy bass beat that feels like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. This way, your successors, instead of drinking sweet wine and singing bawdy ballads, could spend their evenings jerking about in time to the aural equivalent of being hit over the head – which was why it was called "clubbing" – while being blinded by flashing strobe lights, and taking pills to make themselves imagine they were having more fun than any generation before them.

'And yet, while both classical music and dance music required more and more training to enjoy them, opera was being supplanted by something called "musicals" that sent people home humming their tunes. The only way to deal with those is for critics to train audiences to regard every musical as escapist froth – whether it's about urban prostitution, gang warfare in New York, or the problems faced by Jews in Tsarist Russia. They must learn to call every attractive tune "saccharine", and every story that makes you care about the characters "sentimental", until everyone has learnt to despise such things. And when the sweetness is finally sucked out of all music, then the revenge of the musician will be complete!'

'Why do you need revenge?' I asked. 'Can you eat revenge? Or drink it? Does it improve your looks? Or take away the pain of not being loved?'

'I don't want those any more!' retorted Erik. 'Our imperfections were the only thing that made us distinctive, and now we're losing them. Don't you see: if you're not quite as fat as you were, and I'm not quite as ugly or as evil as I was, and Malvolio isn't quite as obnoxious as he was, or Sir Andrew quite as stupid, then we'll no longer be the people we were written to be!'

'Maybe not,' I yawned, 'but we'll probably be so happy that we don't mind.'

'Who wants to be _happy_?' sneered Erik. 'I'm a genius; geniuses are supposed to be deranged and isolated and misunderstood.' And with that he rolled over and went to sleep.

Erik's moods were so sudden that I wasn't sure I'd ever learn to read them. But then, perhaps I wasn't as shrewd at knowing what went on in other people's minds as I thought. I certainly hadn't understood the way Hal's mind worked, and we'd been best friends for about ten years before the day when, suddenly, we weren't.

I know the plays make it look as though everything turned round within a few months, but that's playwrights for you. But, thinking back, perhaps things had begun to change years earlier, when Hal had come back from a meeting with his father to get us organised for the Battle of Shrewsbury. He'd been still the same Hal, still affectionate and joking and mischievous, but with a new air of authority, rattling off orders for battle before we'd even had breakfast: 'Bardolph, take this letter to my brother the Duke of Lancaster and this one to Lord Westmoreland; come on, Peto, we've got thirty miles to ride this morning; Jack, you're in charge of recruiting 150 foot-soldiers – meet me in the Temple Court 2pm tomorrow and I'll pay you the money to equip them,' and then riding off again, as brisk as a dolphin herding fish.

In France, the Crown Prince is called the Dauphin, and perhaps 'dolphin' is a pretty good description of the kind of prince that Hal had been. It's a beast that can look like a fish and move like a fish without ever forgetting that it isn't a fish, and can dive deep into the water and leap through the air without belonging to either. It's the cleverest and most playful of all beasts, and always seems to be just laughing and playing about, until you realise that it is lethally fast and accurate in pursuit of its prey, and that its smile is full of razor-sharp teeth. But, of course, we can outdo the French; where they only have a Dolphin, we have a Prince of Whales.

It didn't occur to me at the time that Hal was starting to grow up. Perhaps he wished that I'd grow up as well, and become the sort of friend he could trust his life to in battle, rather than just a mate who was a good laugh when we were hanging out in the pub. Maybe he wished I was capable of at least trying to be helpful and responsible in an emergency, instead of just messing around the way we always had.

Well, obviously, I wasn't. But there were still years more of drinking together and playing and having daft conversations, and not much changed between us, except that I became more of a show-off and spent even more money that I didn't actually have, took on Robin as a page, and wrote all my letters headed in the Roman style, beginning with name and titles of sender followed by name and titles of recipient, even if it was just a note to say, 'See you in the _Boar's Head_ this evening.' I began to be jealous of Ned Poins, who was the only other one in our gang who was a particularly close friend of Hal's, because it couldn't be long before Henry IV died and Hal became king, and being the king's closest friend was obviously going to be a good position to be in. And after all, the only reason Hal and Poins got on so well was that they were both obsessed with disguises and playing practical jokes on anyone from me to the trainee barman at the _Boar's Head_.

I don't know what became of Poins. The last time I saw him was just before I had to ride off to Yorkshire for the Battle of Gaultree Forest, when I was having dinner with Nell Quickly and Doll Tearsheet and Bardolph and Pistol (except that Pistol started a fight with Doll almost at once and I had to chase him away, after which the women were all over me), and just when Doll and I were having a bit of a cuddle and gossiping about Hal and Poins, it turned out that those two were spying on me to find out what I said about them behind their backs. It must have been very disappointing for them to find out that, while I was mildly disparaging about them when they weren't there, I was nothing like as obscene as when I was insulting them to their faces, but they pretended to take offence anyway, and I invented an excuse, and just when things were getting interesting, Peto turned up to tell me that there were army officers knocking on the door of every pub and every brothel in the area, wanting to know why I hadn't reported for duty. In other words, it was exactly like any other evening at the _Boar's Head_, except that I didn't know it would be the last time that Hal and Poins and I would ever spend an evening talking rubbish together like this. By the time I came back, Hal had become king, and Poins, who was sharper the rest of us and must have guessed the way things were going to go, had disappeared of his own accord without waiting to be banished.

In the two months I'd been with Arthur, I'd stopped thinking about the past, if only because it was a thousand years in the future. But now I was starting to remember it all again, and as I fell asleep, I dreamed about the day when I had gone to the Coronation, taking Bardolph and Pistol and Justice Shallow with me, to congratulate Hal on becoming king. But somehow this time, I dreamed that I _was_ the newly-crowned Henry V:

_When I'd decided to spend my time as a prince with all kinds of low-lifes from wayward knights to common ruffians and prostitutes, I hadn't thought there were any serious drawbacks. Yes, I was deliberately ruining my reputation, so that people would be all the more impressed when I reformed later on, and in the meantime, I would have learnt how ordinary people lived. It hadn't occurred to me that I was going to hurt anyone. Now, I'd become king, and the country was poised for a reign of terror. My father had really believed, until a few minutes before his death, that I wanted him to die. Hard-working officials who had had to punish me when I misbehaved were now terrified of reprisals. Even my own brothers were frightened of me. _

_I had to prove to them all that I really had changed. And unfortunately, the only way I could do that was by rejecting everyone I had been friends with up until now, particularly the group of men standing in front of me now. They weren't the salt of the earth. They were venal, selfish men whom I wouldn't trust to feed my cat for the weekend, but who expected to be given great rank and power because they knew me. But on the other hand, they were men with whom I had heard not only the chimes at midnight but also the police banging on the door at 2am: men who loved and trusted me and, right now, were probably the only people in the world who did, and I was about to betray their trust, as though I was drowning blind kittens._

_Then again, were these men really worse than my father the usurper and (probable) murderer, or my brother who invited rebel leaders to peace talks only in order to kill them? When I had finally managed to convince my dying father that I loved him, he had given me his final advice which was: 'Go and start wars in the Middle East so that people don't have time to think about whether you should be in power or not.' My family weren't much better than any other criminal gang, except that we had the power to be nasty on a bigger scale than anyone else. _

_But all the same, I was now the head of both my family and the kingdom, and had to defend justice, and I couldn't do that if my officials had to keep kow-towing to common criminals to keep them sweet. Why couldn't these people who used to be my friends just take the hint and go away with some remnants of dignity? I was speaking more harshly than I wanted to, blaming them equally for things they couldn't help, for things that weren't even wrong, and for faults I'd never objected to in the past, in the hope that they'd be angry with me and not even want to be friends with me any more, but they still seemed to assume I was only joking. (Why shouldn't they assume that? If you're always giving your dog playful slaps, how's it supposed to know when you're smacking it to punish it?) Why did they stand there until I had to have them arrested just to get rid of them?_

_My life had been one long series of disguises. I had played at being a degenerate wastrel, played at being a highwayman, and even, once, played at being a waiter. Now I was playing a king, and, unless I went around disguised as an ordinary person sometimes, I was condemned to play the same part for the rest of my life._

That was what I dreamed, anyway. It's just imagination, and I don't know if Henry V really did think and feel all those things at once. But perhaps he did. When I woke up, there were tears on my pillow, and for the first time, I was feeling sorry for Henry V rather than for myself.

'Are you all right?' asked Erik. 'I wasn't even _trying_ to make you have nightmares this time, I promise!'

'No, I'm fine. I was just remembering a man I knew once. He was trying to reform, but coming from a family as messed-up as his, it's going to be a lonely, uphill struggle all the way. Still, I expect he'll manage. Did you manage to sleep?'

'Yes, all night, thanks.'

'I wasn't snoring too much?' I asked.

'I expect so, but I've got used to it. Now, let's get up; it's our turn to make breakfast.' And we went out into the golden morning full of singing birds.


	21. Chapter 21

[told by Malvolio]

Despite King Arthur's peculiar choice of companions, he was undeniably devout. This, in fact, was one of the things the rest of us found hardest to understand. In the worlds we had come from, urging someone to say his prayers was the bitterest insult available, implying that he was either so deranged that he must be demon-possessed (and therefore needed to pray in order to frighten the demons away) or so wicked that he needed to beg God's forgiveness immediately to avoid being struck down by a thunderbolt. It hadn't occurred to me that a decent, law-abiding man would need to get up early every day to talk to God, let alone that anyone would actually _want_ to, as the King and Cheiron apparently did.

Sir John sometimes joined them, not, I think, out of any sense of piety, but perhaps just for company, like a dog laying its head in its master's lap, or perhaps to cut me out, because he knew that if he joined them, I wouldn't deign to be there, and vice versa. Whichever of us didn't get there first would sulk a short distance away, far enough off to be obviously not joining in, but visible enough to make everyone else feel uncomfortable. I might add that I was much better at sulking in a dignified fashion than Sir John. There is an art to holding the head and the shoulders at precisely the right angle to communicate both the messages: 'It is monstrous that you have excluded me from your company in favour of that disgusting wretch merely because he happens to be of higher birth than I am,' and: 'I scorn your probably heretical teachings and worship style and would not pray with you if you begged me to.' Meanwhile, Erik usually went off on his own to do his handwriting practice, either copying out poems or writing poetry of his own. Sir Andrew hung around with whoever didn't actually tell him to get lost.

Sundays were a different matter. Then, we all went to whatever church we happened to be passing, or, if we met a hermit meditating in the forest, we would ask him to break off from his meditations to teach us for a while. Either way, we were supposed to learn together, despite the fact that we didn't belong to the same denomination. King Arthur was fully under the thumb of the Pope, because there wasn't really any choice in his age – although I couldn't be sure quite when that was. I had thought that King Arthur, if he existed at all, had lived in Britain at a time when the Celtic church was diverging from Rome, but somehow his world seemed to have been coloured by pre-Reformation storytellers who took it for granted that all Christians were obedient little Papists.

Apparently Sir John had come from a Nonconformist background, as I had, even if neither of us had willingly gone into _any_ place of worship in decades. Sir Andrew wasn't sure what religion he was, but was very clear that Puritanism was A Bad Thing. I suppose he was vaguely Church of England at times when the Anglicans happened to be in power. Erik had been born in France (despite his very Nordic name) and should probably have been brought up as a Roman Catholic, but, considering that he had been kept hidden away until he was five years old and then sold to a travelling fair, the phrase 'brought up' didn't really apply. He had travelled far enough to find out that there are different religions with different rules, so that Hindus don't eat beef, Muslims don't drink alcohol, and Christians are only allowed one wife, but nobody seemed to have explained to him that, for example, murdering people was wrong. On the other hand, he did understand music, and he took the view that, if Christianity had produced Bach and Handel, there might be something in it.

Inevitably, going to church led to arguments. The first time things came to a head was when, during a sermon on the passage in Matthew's gospel about knowing a tree by its fruit, Sir John growled, 'I'm not putting up with any more of this. I'm going to wait outside with Cheiron.'

'So am I,' chimed in Sir Andrew, randomly loyal to whoever had been the last person to speak.

'I'm not leaving you to your own devices,' I said. 'I'll come and keep an eye on you.' By now the entire congregation was turning round to stare at us, and the priest was obviously wondering why we'd come if we weren't prepared to listen to God's word.

'Maybe we'd all better go,' said King Arthur. We filed outside to where Cheiron was listening from the porch, and all set off away from the village, and through the woods to the clearing where we were camping. As soon as we'd left the churchyard, Sir John turned to King Arthur, eyes blazing with fury, and demanded, in the tones of a man pulling a dagger out of his chest, 'Why did you give me hope?'

'Sorry?' said King Arthur.

'You should be! It was all right back in my world, making jokes about how I knew I ought to repent but, now that my body was as clapped-out as my soul, I'd left it a bit late. But I could always put off thinking about God and judgement and things, until I knew I was dying, and then I was terrified that I'd go to Hell, but instead I came here, and you got me to come along to church with you, and I started to think that Jesus loved me and there was hope after all. And now it turns out that Jesus is just like all kings – well, maybe not you, Arthur, but you know what I mean – and at the end of the day, he's going to turn on the people who believe in him and say, "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!" Why didn't you _warn_ me, Arthur? You bastard!'

'There's no need to speak to the King like that,' I said. 'It's not King Arthur's fault _or_ God's if we choose to go on deluding ourselves even after we've been taught to know our place.'

'If it comes to knowing your place, why do _you_ think you can speak to a knight like that?' put in Sir Andrew.

'Because _this_ knight made exactly the same mistake I did,' I said. 'I don't have much in common with you, Sir John. I was good at being a servant, at least; you were useless at being a soldier, far worse than useless as an officer, and not even very good at being a criminal. But we were equally stupid if we expected to be promoted to being counts just because we loved people who had the power to make us great and who we thought loved us; and we were both humiliated and locked up as a punishment for presuming too much. Can't you see that expecting God to love us is just making the same mistake at a higher level? Surely the sensible, grown-up thing to do is to learn _not_ to love or trust anyone or hope for anything, so that we can't be disappointed.'

'Do you think George Eliot would have agreed with that? Was Silas Marner wiser when he lived that way?' retorted Sir John. I had unwisely let Cheiron talk me into telling the story of _Silas Marner_ the evening before, and, to my horror, it had proved very popular. By the time I reached the part where Eppie, learning that her biological father is the wealthy Godfrey Cass, rejects him for her adoptive father, Silas the weaver, everyone had been crying with relief and joy, and I realised that I didn't care about Silas or Eppie at all any more. The story wasn't mine if other people liked it; it was just sentimental garbage.

'We don't need to do without love,' said Arthur firmly. 'God loves each one of us as His son. He doesn't change his mind, because he isn't as frail and capricious as earthly kings like me. God is love, and love always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.'

'Well, yes, but He's got different ways of showing His love,' I said, trying to remember how the pastor had explained it to me when I was young. 'He shows His love to the Elect by granting them the grace to believe in Him and repent of their sins and be saved, and He shows His love to everyone else by letting them be an example of His power to destroy them. We can't choose to be in the Elect, any more than we choose what colour hair to have.'

'Do you think I ought to dye mine?' asked Sir Andrew, who was the only one except Cheiron who hadn't yet gone grey or bald. 'I think my blond hair looks quite nice, but do you think maybe God prefers auburn?'

'No,' I said. 'Esau had red hair, and God hated him before he was even born.'

'Was Esaup the one who wrote stories about tortoises?' asked Sir Andrew.

'That's right,' said Sir John. 'He never got paid for writing all those fables, though, because he'd sold his copyright for a potted message. Right, Cheiron?'

'Jack, stop winding him up; Andrew, God isn't bothered about your hair,' said Cheiron, 'and Malvolio, you're...'

'I'm what? Insane? Demon-possessed? They said the same of Jesus.'

'No, of course I don't think you're insane,' said Cheiron, 'but I don't know how long you can stay sane if you try to believe things like that. Do you think that _you're_ predestined to go to Hell, or only that the rest of us are?'

'I know I am, because I've tried to live a virtuous life,' I said. 'Don't you remember that sermon at the church we went to last week, on why Pride is the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins? The priest there was saying that the most dangerous and terrible form of pride isn't boastfulness and vanity, but what we call self-respect, and that when parents and teachers try to teach children to be clean or honest or hard-working by appealing to their self-respect, the Devil rejoices. And I know that's true of me. When I was a boy, my mother used to send me on errands to the grocer's shop, and I knew that I could easily sneak just one sweet out of the jar while the grocer's back was turned, and nobody would notice. But I wouldn't do it because I didn't want to have to think of myself as "Malvolio who steals sweets from a half-blind old grocer", and so I told myself that I didn't like sweets anyway. And I thought I was a good boy, and now it turns out that I was committing the sin of Satan by being too proud to be a thief, and God would rather I had stolen the sweets!'

'But can't you be proud of being good at stealing?' asked Erik. 'Once when I was running a protection racket and the victim didn't pay up on time, I came up to him when he was alone in a locked room, slipped out the envelope containing my 20,000 francs that he'd safety-pinned into the inside pocket of his waistcoat, replaced it with an envelope containing 20,000 francs of toy money, disappeared, and was back in my den below the Opera House in time to switch on the listening-device and hear him swearing when he discovered the theft. Did you ever pull off anything that neat, Jack?'

'No!' said Sir John, laughing. 'If I managed to steal anything valuable, it was usually stolen off me before I got home. But anyway, being proud of being clever at stealing is just worldly vanity, so it isn't as bad as spiritual pride.'

'God doesn't want anyone to steal or boast about it,' said Arthur. 'And I'm sure the priest didn't really mean that about self-respect. Oh, Malvolio, have you been worrying about this all week?'

'I'm not worrying. If God is like that, I don't want to know Him, anyway.'

'And if He isn't like that?' asked Arthur.

'If God was the "loving Heavenly Father" most Christians believe in, he'd be more of a myth than Zeus ever was. Don't you see? If God was lovely, then it would be natural for everyone to love Him, so it wouldn't take any special grace. But if God is everything we'd naturally consider hateful, then it takes a miracle for even a few people to be able to love Him unconditionally.'

'If God's that bad, we'd better hope we're going to Hell so as to be as far away from him as possible,' said Sir John.

'Yes, but you can't, because Shakespeare says you're not in Hell,' pointed out Erik. '"A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child," – that's what they said about you when you died.'

'I don't remember _feeling_ like a child being christened,' said Sir John. 'Not unless they meant screaming and crying and not understanding what's going on, anyway. Still, if my friends want to remember my death as more peaceful than it was, I suppose it makes them feel better, and everyone's allowed to be a bit sentimental about the dead. That's why you don't often see the headline: "Local lad killed in war was disgrace to the regiment," or, "Bratty juvenile delinquent run over by cart," or...'

'Or tombstones that read, "Feckless brother-in-law, conned me into mortgaging my house to finance his hare-brained business scheme, never paid me back but could somehow afford to keep pedigree hounds, not much missed," I suggested.

'Exactly. If Nell Quickly wants to think of me as a christened child, instead of moaning about how I never paid my bills, that's fine by me.'

'Anyway, christening babies is theologically unsound,' I said. 'They're not old enough to know whether they believe in God or not, so it reduces sprinkling them with water to a superstitious ritual.'

Sir Andrew's eyes widened in horror. 'You weren't even christened?'

'Not as a baby, no. I was _baptised_ when I was twelve years old, just before leaving school and home to start my first job, as page to the Lady Olivia's father.'

'Maybe that's a better idea,' said King Arthur. 'It ought to be a rite of passage, like when Kay was doing his vigil to prepare for becoming a knight, and I sat up with him because I was going to be his squire. It seems rather a waste to use up the most important experience of life on babies who won't even remember it.'

'When I came to believe in Jesus, Jewish believers weren't even convinced it was all right to baptise Gentile humans, let alone centaurs,' said Cheiron. 'And they were particularly wary about me, because I was related to the pagan gods, and because by that time I'd died of blood poisoning and been made immortal and turned into a constellation in the heavens, so that I was almost a god myself. In the end I just waded out into the sea and dunked myself under the waves.'

'I don't think I've ever been christened,' said Erik. 'If I had been, I'd have been given a name, wouldn't I? I only decided to be Erik when I wanted Christine to think of me as a man and not just call me "Angel" all the time. But when I was a little boy, I don't remember my mother ever calling me anything, except "Shut up!" sometimes.'

'Would you like to be baptised, Erik?' asked Cheiron.

'What, now?'

'Well, not right this second,' said Cheiron. 'For a start, we're back at the campsite, and I don't know about you, but I'm about ready for lunch. How do you feel about fresh pea and mint soup, by the way?'

We all murmured our approval. The place we were camping was a patch of common grazing-ground, much of it overgrown with brambles, with a few oak-trees and crab-apple trees. We had arrived early the previous day, and spent much of the afternoon cutting the less fruitful bits of trees and brambles, so there was no shortage of firewood. Some of the blackberries looked dark enough to be ripe, but still tasted sour. Cheiron knelt down to kindle a fire, and then put a pot of water on to heat up.

'Secondly,' he continued, as he worked, 'after the kind of insane conversation we've been having this morning, you must be pretty confused about what Christianity actually is. I hope that as you live with us, we can show you God's love, instead of just talking to you about what the Bible says. And then you can think about whether you want to be a Christian, and if you decide you do, we can look for somewhere for you to be baptised.'

'Not in a church,' said Erik. 'I want to be baptised in a river, like Jesus.'

When we'd finished lunch, as I was washing up, Cheiron said to me quietly, 'This isn't just about Erik, you know. I hope that you can experience God's love through our love, too.'

I said nothing. I had found out the hard way that God loves rogues, not boringly law-abiding people like me. But if God wanted so save Erik, perhaps He would want me to help Erik learn to study the Bible, at least.


	22. Chapter 22

[told by Cheiron]

'You know, one advantage to having Erik here is that he's weird enough to make the rest of us look normal by comparison,' said Jack. 'Yesterday he asked me if the reason I'd had sex with lots of women but wasn't exactly in love with any of them was that I was secretly in love with a man! I said no, it was because I liked having sex with women, and he said that proved I was trying to deny it to myself, and he thought King David was probably the same. So I tried to explain to him about friendship-love being different from romantic love, and he said, in that case, he thought he was falling in friendship, and was that all right? I said yes, as long as he stopped asking stupid questions. I don't know why I put up with nonsense like this from Erik, when I wouldn't from anyone else.'

'Probably because you understand that Erik truly doesn't know any better,' I suggested. 'We know that it's natural for a man to love his family and his friends as well as his mistress, but Erik's not used to feeling anything about other people, because he's spent most of his life just surviving, and so having emotions or relationships would get in the way. And then the first person he did have any feelings for was Christine, so, as far as Erik is concerned, "love" means the passion that makes a man stalk a woman obsessively and then kidnap her to try to force her to marry him. So it's no wonder he's confused when the Bible says, "Love your neighbour as yourself." It's as though he'd lived nearly all his life seeing only in black and white, until one day someone showed him a piece of purple cloth, and now we're expecting him to understand what a rainbow is.'

Erik had decided to read the entire Bible to prepare for being baptised. With his phenomenal powers of concentration, this wouldn't have taken long, except that he was baffled by concepts like morality, love, and mercy. Where most people were shocked by passages where God's wrath against a person, or a city or an entire country, seemed disproportionate, Erik couldn't see why the victims needed to have done anything wrong to deserve punishment, or even what 'wrong' or 'deserve' meant. He assumed as a matter of course that an all-powerful God would destroy cities for the fun of it, simply because he could. And when a story had a happy ending – for example, where Joseph, after playing tricks on his brothers to pay them back for selling him into slavery, forgives them and invites them to come and live with him in Egypt – Erik would just ask, 'But why didn't he kill them?'

This was why the whole group of us had to spend most of each rest period studying the Bible with Erik and trying to explain to him what it meant. Oddly enough, Jack turned out to be the best at this. He might be a very lapsed Christian who had broken most of the Ten Commandments at every opportunity (possibly not murder, or at least not in person, but he seemed cheerfully casual about having got soldiers under his command killed), but his imagination was furnished in Biblical stories and imagery: Lazarus the beggar at the rich man's gate, Job covered in sores and sitting among the ashes, and the Prodigal Son returning to his father.

Satyrs are more spiritual creatures than most humans realise, even though they are too uninhibited to seem reverent by human standards. In classical times, the original satyrs had been the companions of Dionysus because he had been willing to live with them when more established gods like Zeus had not. But later on, satyrs had interbred with humans, and produced descendants who looked more or less human, but who combined a satyr's instinct for playfulness, irreverence, and imagination and inspired insight, with a human's ability to think and question. A surprising number of storytellers, poets, and philosophers have had some satyr ancestry.

Some of them, because they could see the inconsistencies in the social and moral codes they were supposed to accept, decided to do whatever they felt like, and spent most of their lives getting into trouble without ever really understanding why other people had a problem with their behaviour. But others, like Socrates, who did try to live virtuously, tended to look much more deeply than anyone else into what virtue _really_ meant, and insisted on asking awkward questions like, 'Is the political system we've got really the best way to run a state?' and, 'Is the true God really like the gods we claim to believe in?' These people were called philosophers, and heretics, and seditious teachers, and corrupters of the young, and, sooner or later, martyrs.

I was going to have to warn Jack about all this before too long. But for now, it was time to gather the whole group round for the latest instalment of Erik's journey through the Old Testament.

'Can everyone remember what we were looking at yesterday?' I asked. 'Andrew?' (I knew he hadn't been paying attention.)

'Was it to do with kings?' asked Andrew. 'David was a Good King and Solomon was a Wise King, but I can't remember what happened after that.'

'Solomon's son Rehoboam was a Tactless King who infuriated the Israelites by making insulting Yokes, claiming that his little finger was thicker than his father's waist, and threatening to scourge them with scorpions,' explained Jack. 'The Israelites considered this to be a Bad Thing and nearly all seceded, splitting the kingdom into Israel (not to be confused with Judah) and Judah (also called Israel), and built a fresh wave of golden calves so that people knew where they were. As a result, the kings of Israel (and, of course, Judah) became less and less memorable, especially when the king of Israel had the same name as the king of Judah or vice versa. Whenever there was a battle, the Israelites charged around the battlefield shouting, "Cry God for Whatsisname..." "No, he was king last month, it's his uncle Thingummy now..." "Well, anyway, the king of Israel..." "No, Israel's the bit that got conquered by Assyria, so they worship Assyrian gods now, and this is Judah, where we worship the God of Israel..."

'So, of course, this made it easy for the Babylonians (or Chaldeans) to invade, as they knew that they were fighting under King Nebuchadnezzar, and were only uncertain about whether they were Chaldeans or Babylonians. Whenever they invaded, they deposed the king and made somebody else king and then changed his name, to make sure that everyone stayed confused.'

'How do you remember all this?' asked Andrew.

'He doesn't,' snapped Malvolio. 'He's just making a mockery out of the few scraps of teaching that everyone remembers from Sunday School.'

'I don't,' said Andrew. 'I don't remember anything.'

'And I never went to Sunday School, which is why I'm trying to learn now,' Erik reminded us.

'It'd be easier to remember if we did it as a play,' suggested Jack.

'Yes, you could make a wonderful trilogy about Saul, David, and Solomon,' I agreed.

'A tetralogy,' Jack said. 'There are so many stories about David that he's just got to be a Split King.'

'Well, I don't think it's very appropriate to use the Word of God as material for a cheap charade,' said Malvolio.

'Fine; I wasn't planning to have you in it anyway,' said Jack. 'Shall we do the bit we were reading yesterday, where David is at war with his son Absalom? I'll be King David; Erik, you can be Prince Absalom, so try to imagine that you're very handsome and incredibly popular and charming, and have masses of long thick hair that you never cut until it weighs at least five pounds.'

'Who can I be?' asked Andrew. 'Can you write my lines down for me now, because I'm not much good at improvising?'

'Do you want to be Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan?'

'Who's he?'

'Well, I'm King David, the boy who started off as a shepherd and ended as the second and greatest ever king of Israel. Now, I had been working for Saul, who was king before me, as an officer in his army, and playing the harp to calm him when he was troubled, but when he started getting paranoid and chucking spears at me, I left. But I had been engaged to Saul's daughter Michal...'

'And having an affair with his son Jonathan,' added Erik.

'No I wasn't!' shouted Jack. 'Get it into your head: having friends doesn't mean I'm gay! I've got at least eight wives, mostly someone else's!'

'So what? Oscar Wilde had a wife and two children,' retorted Erik. '_That's_ probably the real reason Saul kept throwing spears at you, because he didn't want you seducing his son, any more than the Marquis of Queensberry did.'

'_Anyway_,' continued Jack, 'after the Philistines killed Saul's sons, and Saul committed suicide, I became king, and married a few more wives, including Michal, but she's a bit of a killjoy really – rather like Malvolio. And I invited Mephibosheth – that's you, Andrew – to come and live with my family, so that I could be kind to you because your father Jonathan was my friend. Also, you're lame in both legs, because when you were a little boy and had to escape when your father and grandfather were killed, your nurse was carrying you and dropped you and broke your legs and the bones never set properly. So that's good, because if you're disabled, you've automatically got the audience's attention. You can lean on a couple of tent-poles for crutches. So, in this play, I think you've turned against me, because your wicked servant Ziba has told me that you're plotting to take back your grandfather's kingdom, but when I come back from the war, I confront you about it, and you explain:

'I did desire t'attend your majesty,

But, being lame, I did command my servant

Bring me my ass that I might ride with you,

At which he stole away to slander me.

Nay, freely, you may slay me if you will;

You are God's angel, I a mangy cur,

The kin of Saul, deserving naught but death.

But that I love you, mark these witnesses:

My beard uncomb'd since you went forth from me,

My twisted feet more marr'd with nails untrimm'd,

My face and clothes unwash'd, save with my tears

As night and day I prayed for your return.'

'I can't remember all that,' said Andrew. 'Is it all right if I just read it out?'

'Of course,' said Jack, writing the lines out on a spare page of Andrew's notebook. 'You can wrap a bit of cloth round the book and make it look as though you're sobbing into your handkerchief as you speak, and ashamed to look me in the eye. If you were playing a soldier, you'd write your lines on the inside of your shield – it doesn't matter where they are, as long as the audience can't see them. Anyway, earlier I'd told Ziba that all your property was forfeit to him because you were a traitor, and now that I realise I was wrong, I order it to be divided between the two of you, but you say, "Let Ziba keep my wealth; why should I care?/ To see my king is wealth beyond compare." And that's the end of the play.'

We shared out the rest of the parts, with Arthur playing Joab and his brother Abishai, both generals in David's army (since the two brothers don't often appear in the same scene, it was simplest to treat them as one character) and David's friend Hushai the Arkite, who pretends to go over to Absalom's side in order to give him misleading advice. I was Mephibosheth's servant Ziba (since I could also be the donkey laden with food and drink that Ziba brings to David and his army), the counsellor Ahithophel who advises Absalom but commits suicide when his advice is rejected, and various soldiers and messengers.


	23. Chapter 23

[still told by Cheiron]

'Kings, demigods, gentlemen, and Erik,' declaimed Jack, striding onstage wearing Arthur's helmet as the nearest thing to a crown we had with us, 'we present _The Tragedy Of Absalom, Prince Of Israel_. Act 1, Scene 1: King David's palace in Jerusalem...

'O Samuel, why didst thou anoint us king?

Alas, that royal plural! For I have

More wives, more sons, more woes than other men,

And yet the two were dearest me are gone.

But five years past, my Amnon, oldest son,

Had, feigning sickness, raped my daughter Tamar,

Then hated her and cast her from his sight.

Some two years on, her brother Absalom

Slew Amnon, and is fled into Geshur,

To leave me, three years long, to long for him.

I have forgot my grief at Amnon's loss;

I mourn the living son, and not the dead.

Yet I must dry my grief with dust of work,

Or weep for subjects' problems, not mine own.

Good day, good widow!'

For Arthur had just come 'onstage' (the middle of the clearing where we had stopped for lunch represented Jerusalem, while the patch of bracken and bushes before the woodland started again represented all other locations in the story) with a towel wrapped around his head to mimic the veil and headscarf worn by some Eastern women. 'Widow, aye, indeed!' he replied, raising his voice to compensate for the towel muffling his words:

'Widowed of husband, sons, and earthly hope!

My sons have brawled, and one hath slain the other,

And now my clan cry, "Hang the murderer!"

Thus would they quench my last bright coal that burns,

Cut off my husband's name with his descendants,

And leave me none to care when I grow old.'

'Fear not; thy son shall live; we pardon him,' pronounced Jack, very solemnly.

'In this your majesty doth wrong himself

By pardoning my son and not his own!

As water spilt doth mingle with the dust,

So all must die and turn again to clay.

Yet God, who quickens life within the mud,

Restores the banished sinner to His grace,

And will you not restore your Absalom?'

'Thou art a prophet!' exclaimed Jack, laughing; 'Tell me one thing more:/ Was it not Joab set thee on this game?'

'My liege, your wisdom is as angels' sight:

T'was Joab bade me play a widow's part

That you might spare me for my widow's weeds

That have no mercy on yourself, your son,

Or all of us who long for his return.'

With this, Arthur ducked behind a bush to get rid of his towel and return as Joab, when Jack called:

'Come, Joab! Upon more consideration,

We do reverse our word of banishment.

Bring Absalom unto Jerusalem,

But bid him dwell within his own estate;

He may not speak to me, nor see my face.'

'To show this mercy does my lord much grace,' replied Arthur, bowing.

The audience, however, was still confused. 'So does that mean the widow was really Joab in disguise?' asked Andrew.

'No!' said Jack. 'I asked you first if you wanted to play her as well as Mephibosheth, remember? She's just some woman Joab asked to pretend to be a widow whose son is a murderer, so that David will see the right thing to do if he thinks he's doing it for someone else instead of for himself.'

'Are all plays this full of lies and deception?' snorted Malvolio. 'I'm surprised the King forgave the woman for lying to him like that.'

'Well, some rulers aren't easy to confront directly,' I explained. 'Quite often, if people needed to challenge King David about something he'd done wrong, they'd tell him a story of something that was a bit like what he'd done, and ask for his judgment. If that helped him see things more clearly, how could it be wrong?'

'It's still lying,' said Malvolio.

The next scene opened with Absalom, frustrated that his father was still refusing to have direct contact with him and that Joab wouldn't help him any further, setting fire to Joab's farm just to get his attention, and opened with David embracing Absalom with the words: 'Thou mad young firebrand ruffian of a prince,/ Thou art right welcome to Jerusalem!'

There was a pause, and then Malvolio said, 'Does that mean that Absalom has been pardoned? Even after he's compounded his original offence by committing arson as well as murder? So that, in effect, he's rewarded for an act of vandalism?'

'That's right!' said Erik cheerfully. 'If I annoy Joab long enough by setting fire to his fields, sooner or later he's bound to plead with my father on my behalf, just to keep some of his crops intact!'

'And it makes me realise how desperate my son was to see me,' added Jack. 'It was bad enough for him in exile, but to be living in Jerusalem, maybe within half a mile of me, but not allowed to meet me, must have been a far worse torment, and the fire was burning in his heart long before it torched Joab's barley.'

'Well, if you had any sense, you'd see that he hasn't improved and send him back to Geshur,' said Malvolio. 'And I don't think it's helpful to show criminal actions being rewarded, because it sets a bad example.'

'Don't talk to me like that when I'm King,' said Jack. 'And anyway, wait until you've seen the full story.'

So, all afternoon, the play unwound from a sketch into a full-length drama, as Absalom schemed to usurp the throne, and David and his court and his army (all of which consisted of Arthur) fled from him.

'Andrew, do you want to be Shimei son of Gera?' asked Jack.

'I thought I was Mephibosheth son of Jonathan?'

'You are, but he's not on until Act Five. Shimei comes from the same clan as Saul, so you didn't want me to be king in the first place, and when you hear that I'm fleeing from my own son, you come and rail against me.'

'Rail? You mean I'm supposed to build a fence?'

'No, you're supposed to _give_ offence! You just shout insults and throw rubbish at me and stuff. How difficult can it be?'

'Oh! Yes, I'm good at railing!' said Andrew.

'Well, go on, then.'

Andrew wandered uncertainly onstage. 'Uh – you're not a very nice person and I don't want you to be king because you're going bald,' he mumbled.

'No, not like that! You've got to be so abusive that Abishai – that's Arthur – wants to chop your head off for daring to speak to me like that, and I have to stop him. Like this: "Thou whoreson dog, thou clod of women's monthly uncleanness, what art thou good for but to chase other men's wives and murder the husbands? Art thou a man, thou thing that art built upside-down with thy brains in thy codpiece and thy pate full of bollocks? And darest thou write psalms boasting of the cleanness of thy hands? If thou callst thyself a Jew, I would I were one of the goyim, that I kept swine and might pelt thee with pig-shit, for this sheep's dung is too kosher to come near thy foulness." That's how Shimei needs to talk.'

'So if you're Shimei, am I King David now?' asked Andrew.

'No, I'm David, I was just demonstrating – oh, forget it! Just go and sit down for now. In Act Five, when I'm coming back to Jerusalem, you come on as Shimei again and apologise to me – even you can manage that! – and I forgive you. And then you come on as Mephibosheth, on crutches, and I've already written Mephibosheth's lines out for you.'

David and his entourage crossed the Jordan to Manahaim, and Absalom on his mule (played by me, naturally) went to war against him. King David wanted to lead his army into battle himself (probably so that he could ensure that Absalom was taken alive), but let his soldiers persuade him to keep out of the way, as he was too valuable to risk. Instead, he divided his army into three sections, led by Joab, Joab's brother Abishai, and Ittai the Gittite (all played by Arthur), and ordered them to 'Be gentle with my boy, for love of me.'

So, after I had run under an oak tree as the Mule and left Erik dangling helplessly in it (he should have been caught by his long hair, but, as Erik didn't have much hair to spare, he was clinging onto a branch with both hands), I returned as the Soldier who refuses to kill Absalom when Joab commands it (leaving Arthur to stab Erik himself) and then became the Messenger sent to King David.

'What news?' called Jack.

'The best!' I said, uneasily (after all, King David could be unpredictable).

'Then – Absalom is safe?' asked Jack (possibly overdoing the tremulous voice just a touch).

'Safe, in the only way that traitors are:

Safe nevermore to strike. So may we say:

May all your foes be safe as Absalom!'

Jack buried his head in his hands. 'O Absalom, my son, my son, my son! Would Heaven I had died instead of thee!'

'My liege, you love your foes and hate your friends,' growled Arthur, coming on as a stern-faced Joab:

'Some twenty thousand Israelites lie dead,

More by the forest than by battle slain,

And all your sorrow is for Absalom!

I think t'would better please your majesty

If all of us were dead but Absalom!

It very well becomes our shepherd-king

To leave his flock and seek the lamb that strays,

But when that lamb is turned a ravening wolf,

Should we not guide the sheep that wolf pursued,

And lead them safely to Jerusalem?'

So the King and his entourage returned home. Andrew reappeared to be forgiven twice, first as Shimei ('Uh – I'm sorry I was rude to you, but I only said those things because my friend dared me to do it,') and then as Mephibosheth, struggling to hold onto his tent-pole 'crutches' with one hand while riffling through his notebook with the other to find the page with the script on it. Eventually he dropped both the crutches and the notebook, and was by now so much in character as the crippled Mephibosheth that he fell over. Jack knelt beside him to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder and declaim from ground-level:

'Thy stumbles speak more love than gilded words.

I see the villain Ziba slandered thee,

Poor shattered fragment of my Jonathan,

For he desired to win thy property.

And yet, as Ziba much refreshed our army,

Wilt thou bestow some portion of thy fields

That he may learn from thee what mercy is?'

By this time, Andrew had managed to find the relevant page, and read out, '"Let Ziba keep my wealth; why should I care? To see my king is wealth beyond compare. Exeunt omnes." Aren't we going to end with a song or a dance?' he added, disappointed. 'Most of the plays I've seen do.'

'No, we're not!' said Jack indignantly. 'Show some respect, can't you? I'm in deep mourning for my favourite son, and just because I'm the most successful royal songwriter until Henry VIII doesn't mean I'm always in the mood to lead everyone in a rousing chorus of "The Lord Is My Shepherd"!'

'And, more to the point, he isn't really King David, and doesn't know any psalms, because he's spent his entire life in a pub, hearing nothing except indecent drinking songs,' added Malvolio.

_[Author's note: the plot of this play is based on the 2__nd__ Book of Samuel in the Bible, chapters 13 to 19, and some of the dialogue paraphrases what Biblical characters say. However, putting it into blank verse was my own idea.]_


	24. Chapter 24

[still told by Cheiron]

Jack, of course, needed no further encouragement. He stood up and launched into song at once:

'My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

Why art Thou so far from saving me?

By day and night I cry out to Thee,

But never dost Thou hear me.

_Yet Thou art enthronèd, Lord,_

_ Upon the praises of Israel;_

_ In Thee did our fathers trust,_

_ And never were they shamèd._

'I am a worm and not a man,

The scorn of men, and despised by all;

They say, "Let the Lord deliver him,

If He delighteth in him."

_Thou drewest me from the womb,_

_ That art my hope from my mother's teats;_

_ Depart Thou not from me,_

_ For there is none that helpeth._

'Fat bulls of Bashan encompass me;

They gape their mouths as roaring lions.

As water am I pourèd out,

And all of my bones be scattered.

_As wax my heart doth melt;_

_ My strength and mouth are dried up as clay;_

_ For Thou hast brought me forth_

_ Into the dust of death._

'For many dogs have surrounded me;

The wicked delve mine hands and feet.

They stare on me as they count my bones

And part my garments among them.

_Haste Thee to deliver me,_

_ My darling life from the power of dogs._

_ Save me from the lion's mouth_

_ And the unicorns' horns that pierce me._

'To my brethren shall I tell Thy name;

I shall glorify Thee amidst the church.

O praise Him, all ye that dread the Lord,

And honour Him, seed of Jacob!

_He hath not despisèd me,_

_ Nor scorned my prayer in my suffering;_

_ Nor hid He his face from me,_

_ But when I cried out, He heard me!_

'The poor shall eat and shall be fulfilled,

And the heathen turn them unto the Lord,

And fat men feast and shall worship Him –

For none can keep themselves living.

_My seed, it shall serve the Lord;_

_ A generation yet to come_

_ Shall tell of His righteousness_

_ Because the Lord hath done this!'_

When Jack had finished, there was a pause, and then Malvolio hissed, 'Do you seriously think it's acceptable to sing a psalm to the tune of _Greensleeves_?'

'Yes, I do,' said Jack. 'Have you ever listened to the words of the original? "Alas, my love, you do me wrong/ To cast me off discourteously." Everyone feels like that sometimes: even kings.'

'I think it works rather well,' I said. 'In any case, the original was written to the tune of an ancient Hebrew folk-song called _The Doe In The Morning_. A lot of David's psalms were written to be sung to folk-tunes.'

'It's very happy-clappy, isn't it?' observed Andrew, adding, 'I don't know what "happy-clappy" means, but it's what everyone says about Christian songs.'

'You should hear some of my Requiem masses,' said Erik. 'Absolutely no clapping or happiness involved, believe me. Especially in the one I wrote for Christine when I thought I was probably going to kill her.'

'In any case,' said Malvolio, trying to retain his level of indignation before the conversation wandered away, 'Sir John, not content with insisting on masquerading as King David, has now been using one of the prophetic psalms as an excuse for further grandstanding. No doubt, when we reach the New Testament, he'll expect to be allowed to play Jesus as well.'

'No way!' said Jack indignantly. 'I want to be Peter! Arthur can be Jesus if he wants.'

'No, I can't,' said Arthur. 'The only character in the New Testament that I'm fit to play is Herod.'

'Give it a rest, will you?' said Jack. 'Just because you've done some things in your life that were a bit Herod-like doesn't mean that you _are_ Herod. You could just as well say that you're exactly like Abraham.'

'Why?' asked Arthur.

'Abraham had an illegitimate son; so did you. Abraham was married to his half-sister; you've had sex with your half-sister. Abraham banished his oldest son into the desert and tried to kill his second son; you're not very good at being a dad either. God loved Abraham and called him His friend; why shouldn't God want to be friends with you as well? God isn't a snob, you know, Arthur. He's not fussy about who he's friends with.'

'Really,' said Malvolio in his silkiest tones, 'I'm not sure your majesty should allow this level of blasphemy, even from a licensed fool.'

'It isn't blasphemy,' said Arthur. 'Jack's only saying what's in the Bible.'

'Yes, and we all know the Devil can quote scripture,' retorted Malvolio.

'And _you_ know that that's a very trite response,' I said. 'After all, Malvolio, how many months was it since people were pretending to think you were demon-possessed, as an excuse not to listen to you?'

Malvolio winced as though he had been lashed with a whip, but then managed to regain control of his emotions. 'Talking of devils,' he added through clenched teeth, 'do you really think Erik learned anything from all this pageantry? It's just given him an excuse to be a villain.'

'I've learnt one thing,' said Erik. '_O Absalom, my son, my son, my son,/ Would Heaven I had died instead of thee!_ David loved Absalom, didn't he? Even though he was a villain?'

'Parents usually do,' I said.

'Mine didn't. My mother used to scream if I tried to get her to give me a cuddle when she came down to the cellar to put my food-bowl down for me. And if I tried to get _out_ of the cellar, she'd drive me back in with a chair and then not come down to me at the next meal-time, and I didn't know if she was ever coming back.'

'Well, parents _should_ love their children, and most of them do,' I said. 'And it sounds as though you loved your mother, even if she didn't know how to love you.'

'Do you think I'd still have been evil, if I'd had parents who loved me? Even if I was still so ugly that everyone else hated me, I might have been all right inside, if I'd had parents who didn't mind what I looked like.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'But you're here now, and I love you, and God loves you so much that He wants you to be His son, like Jesus.'

'Yes,' said Erik thoughtfully. 'God loved Jesus, and that was why He killed Jesus, wasn't it? "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." I was planning to kill Christine, too, because I loved her and she loved Raoul. But then she loved me enough to feel sorry for me and kiss me once on the forehead, which is more than my mother did, so Christine's gentleness broke my heart and killed me.'

'What do you mean, "Each man kills the thing he loves"?' demanded Malvolio.

'It was in a poem I read once, by Oscar Wilde,' explained Erik. 'He wrote it when he was in prison, about one of his fellow-prisoners being hanged. I know nearly all of it by heart, but I'll quote just two verses:

'And every human heart that breaks

In prison-cell or yard,

Is as that broken box that gave

Its treasure to the Lord,

And filled the unclean leper's house

With the scent of costliest nard...

'And he of the swollen purple throat,

And the stark and staring eyes,

Waits for the holy hands that took

The Thief to Paradise.

And a broken and a contrite heart

The Lord will not despise.'

_Author's note: these last two verses really are from __**The Ballad of Reading Gaol**__. Jack's song is an approximate translation, or sometimes mistranslation, of Psalm 22._


End file.
